Test tube hamburgers, and other stories

Artificial meat: closer than you think? Would you eat meat grown in a test tube? If not (and you eat meat), are you satisfied with your knowledge of how your meat is produced?

Air Con: As the world warms, we'll just crank up the air con, right? Wrong. Since 1987, new air conditioners are no longer a threat to stratospheric ozone, but the replacement for ozone-destroying CFCs have been a range of climate-disrupting alternatives, each far worse than CO₂ molecule for molecule: "The leading scientists in the field have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses the newest gases currently employed in air-conditioners, up to 27 percent of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050."

Land grab: An area of agricultural land larger than Texas in developing nations (80% in Africa) has been bought up by foreign governments and corporations over the last few years, according to a new study from the Worldwatch Institute. Some of this has been European corporations keen to make a profit from biofuels regulations, some has been from large nations with serious and growing domestic food security issues, such as China and Saudi Arabia.

Flatter highlands: At least in biodiversity terms. Climate change is flattening the biodiversity found in the Scottish highlands.

China: The fastest growing economy in the history of humanity is not making a happy nation.

House sizes: Australians have some of the largest houses per occupant in the world. This is a significant part of the reason why we have the highest per capita carbon footprint in the OECD.* Large houses not only require more energy-intensive building materials (concrete and steel are both associated with very high emissions), but - all other things being equal - have larger energy needs than smaller dwellings. It doesn't help that we have one of the most coal-reliant electricity systems in the world.
*And that's even before we consider our imported manufactured goods or our exported coal. We export more coal than any other nation.

Solved: Four significant ecological issues have been adequately addressed since 1992. Only another eighty-six to go.

Fracking: the real danger. I wholeheartedly agree and am glad to finally see someone in the mainstream press pick up on this. There are all kinds of legitimate questions about the safety of fracking shale for non-conventional gas, but the biggest one is most rarely addressed, namely, tapping into this resource massive expands the available pool of fossil carbon we will be moving from safely underground and into the active carbon cycle where it can mess with ocean pH and the climate.

Endangered species: The International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List is widely regarded as the most authoritative attempt to account for the level of extinction threat faced by the world's species. Species are categorised according to the degree of severity - Least Concern, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct - yet of all the world's species, the IUCN estimates it has only assessed 4% so far. Of the dangers faced by the other 96% we have as yet little clear idea.

Lent: Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. In this season, we remember that we are dusty and repent because we are dirty. Kyle has a good introduction to Ash Wednesday for those unfamiliar with the tradition.

There are all kinds of ways of observing Lent. For instance, TEAR Australia are suggesting that Christians consider undertaking a forty day carbon fast. Lent is easily misunderstood and frequently abused. The best Lenten disciplines serve to sharpen our hearing of the gospel, preparing our hearts for the great feast of Easter.

During this season, and in the liturgy of today's service, we are exhorted to "Remember, o mortal, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Repent and believe the good news." Last year I offered some reflections upon this text, noting not only that we all return to dust (are mortal) and need to repent of our sin (which is distinct though related to the fact that we shall die), but that we are dust. Dust is our origin, our essence.

I thought I'd re-post a small part of the discussion that came out of that post.

-----

So what might it mean to remember that we are dust? Well, at a minimum, I suspect it means that we cannot simply assume "the environment" is something "out there", an appendix to our existence that can be treated purely instrumentally as a source of "resources". Instead, we recognise that we belong here, that we share a common origin and destiny with other created things. And we share a common task as well: the praise of the creator. So we are reliant upon the non-human in order to truly be human, since we are created to join our voices with creation's praise (in what might be called doxological interdependence). Note that this also means (contra some forms of deep green thought) that the rest of creation needs us to truly be itself too. This puts the lie to the idea that we ultimately face a choice between caring for humans and caring for "the environment".

Hospitality makes you feel at home

"Be hospitable to one another without complaining." - 1 Peter 4.9.

Mi casa es su casa. Being hospitable is a core Christian practice.* Sharing a home, whether for a meal for a night or for longer is a way of using our blessings to bless others. But something that has struck me over the last few years is that the blessing runs both ways. I don't simply mean that you might receive hospitality in return (that is never the goal), or even that you might have a good conversation or make a new friend, though these are frequently true. Instead, my wife and I have discovered that one of the blessings of sharing our place is that the very act of sharing makes us feel more at home. Put another way, a place only becomes our home when we share it with others.

I heard a statistic a few years ago that I now can't source, but I think was a newspaper report of a study done in Australia. It had been found that the average Australian only has six people into their home each year (including family). Are you missing out on receiving blessings by not sharing more?

That said, this instruction in 1 Peter assumes that complaining is commonly associated with the offering of hospitality. Opening your home takes time, effort and sometimes involves some extra costs. It will not always feel like a blessing. Indeed, frequently, it is not something from which you will gain any immediate reward at all.

[Jesus] said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." - Luke 14.12-14.

*It is probably worth drawing a distinction between hospitality and entertaining. The former is sharing your home life with others (including strangers!); the latter is aiming to impress friends or contacts with a life that is not really yours. Being hospitable doesn't necessarily mean cooking a multi-course gourmet meal or offering a five star hotel bed. And while taking people out to dinner can be a lovely thing to do, I'm not sure that it counts as hospitality.

Having written this post, I've just discovered that Jeremy has written an even better post about hospitality, so let me invite you over to his place for a rich meal of thoughts.

192 steps & 63 pubs

We recently moved house, and our new place is considerably closer to college, meaning I can go home for lunch. There are only 192 steps from my desk to my front door. Our new home has some other benefits, such as being in a listed building as part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, being within spitting distance of Scotland's most visited paid tourist attraction,* being next door to a pub that has been in recorded existence since 1516** and being within 500 metres of (at last count) 63 pubs, bars or taverns.***
*Under favourable wind conditions.
**It may be an even older establishment; that is the first record of its name and location.
***No, I haven't been to them all (yet?). The count is based on memory from years walking around the area, supplemented by a couple of minutes looking at Google Maps.

Soiling our own nest: "ecology" vs "environment"

“More precisely, the crisis is that a now-globalizing culture in nature and wholly of nature runs full grain against it. A virile, comprehensive, and attractive way of life is destructive of nature and human community together – this is the crisis. Soils, peoples, air and water are being depleted and degraded together. (Or, on our better days are being sustained together.) It is not ‘the environment’ that is unsustainable. It is a much more inclusive reality, something like life-as-we-have-come-to-know-it. What we call ‘the environmental crisis’ is a sign of cultural failure, then. It is a failure to submit human power to grace and humility, and to work ‘toward the habitation of the places in which we life’ on terms that respect both human limits and the rest of nature’s. Life-as-we-have-come-to-know-it is eating itself alive. Modernity devours its own children.”

- Larry R. Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics
(Geneva: WCC Publications, 1996), 8.

This is a good short summary of an important point. This is the reason that I generally prefer to use the term "ecology" to "environment". The environment is something around us that perhaps we might be able to imagine is disconnected from our lives. Ecology, on the other hand, comes from the Greek words for "house" (oikos) and "order" (logos), and so speaks of the proper and improper ordering of our home here on earth. Our home is a mess and is falling apart. We are soiling our own nest. We have no other place to go.

Home: where we've come from; where we're going

What do you think of when you think of "home"? Warmth, food, comfort, safety, family? A place to relax and be yourself? A place to leave your dirty socks lying around?

This ninety-three minute film is titled simply Home. It is stunningly shot, beautifully scored, nicely narrated and serves as one of the best short introductions to the current human predicament that forms the backdrop to my PhD research. It was apparently the largest film release in history, but somehow I hadn't heard of it until today. It has intentionally also been released for free viewing on YouTube. I would love to hear your reactions to it.

Most of the film consists of breath-taking aerial shots of places you've never seen, or of common things you've never seen like this before, while a female narrator takes us through the history of humanity and how we got to be where we are today, all in carefully scripted prose. After a twenty-minute introduction to life on earth and the history of homo sapiens, the bulk of the film covers many of the most pressing issues that are both caused by and threatening the continued existence of modern industrial society: peak oil, climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, over-fishing, sea level rises, wetland destruction, biodiversity loss, water depletion, mineral depletion, population explosion and social inequality (perhaps the only significant issues not touched upon are soil salination, desertification and introduced species - but, hey, they only had ninety-three minutes). The images progress from one case-study to the next, each standing for one of the issues under discussion. It is wide-ranging, but there is a coherent thread ("faster and faster") that unites the images, and the narration only occasionally lapses into breathless hyperbole.

And of course there is also the obligatory uplifting section found at the end of every mainstream eco-film. However, the hopeful possibilities held out, while inspiring, still felt mainly like wishful thinking. While deeply moving, it ultimately failed to convince me that "together, we can do it".

"It is too late for pessimism" the narrator repeatedly claims, but I wonder whether most forms of optimism require dishonesty (or at least a fair dollop of willful ignorance). At least, where that optimism is for something more or less like today, but perhaps with fewer cars, more efficient light bulbs and wall to wall windfarms. I am all for windfarms, but if even half of the claims in the first eighty minutes of the film are true, then it is too late for sustainable development. Things will have to get much worse before they get anything that approximates better. May God have mercy on us all.
All images from the film. Can you guess what each is of? H/T to Garth for the link and bringing the film to my attention.

O come, Thou Key of David

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

"In my Father's house": further reflections on John 14

A few weeks ago, I said I would post some thoughts on the following teaching of Jesus:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.                      - John 14.1-4

Having discussed Wright's reading of this famous passage in my introductory remarks, I'd like to tentatively offer a suggestion of my own. Where does God dwell? Heaven? The Temple? In Christ? The new heavens and earth? Yes, these are all true (in different senses), yet just a few verses later, another "location" is discussed.

Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."

- John 14.23

Jesus speaks of coming with the Father to those who love and obey him and making their home with them. "My Father's house" might therefore be a reference to the indwelling divine presence amongst the loving and obedient community of disciples. How is this achieved? Through the sending of the Spirit of truth – the Paraclete ("Advocate", or perhaps "Helper"): 

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in [or "amongst"] you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you."

- John 14.15-18

Thus, before we get to verse 23, if we were to ask where the Father "dwells" (what is his "house"), while the Jews might have said "the Temple", Jesus would have said "in me!" (14.10; cf. 2.19-21). The Father dwells in Jesus, and Jesus in the Father. In verse 23 we get a new movement: by the Spirit, both Father and Son dwell in the disciples (14.23), and so this community is also the home of God. Of course, the whole sequence can also be reversed: the disciples dwell in Jesus (by keeping his new commandment of love), and Jesus dwells in the Father.

Thus, could it be that the preparatory departure of which Jesus speaks in verses 2-3 is his death (and/or ascension), and that the return mentioned in verse 3 is not what is usually called "the second coming" (cf. John 21.22?) but is the arrival of the Spirit? If Jesus "goes" to the Father (verses 5-6), he (along with the Father) "returns" to his disciples through the presence of the Spirit. In the light of 14.23, if we ask where the post-Easter Jesus is, it seems he (and the Father) are with those who love him. Therefore, there are "many rooms" to his Father's "house" because there are many who do and will love Jesus. This is meant to be reassuring to the disciples: there is plenty of "room" in the church, always more space in the community of those who love and obey Jesus.

And what does it mean for the disciples to receive the Spirit of truth? On the one hand, it means a continuation of their love for Jesus by obeying his new commandment to love one another (John 13.34-35). On the other hand, it means that Jesus and the Father are not absent from the community. The disciples are not left as "orphans" because Jesus' Father becomes their Father (cf. 20.17), and neither Jesus nor his Father are absent from a community guided by the Spirit of truth into the love shared between the Son and Father. This will be how Jesus reveals himself to the disciples (though not to the world: v.22): through the very "ordinary" (though actually totally divine) experience of love. If they love one another, then this experience of community is itself the proof and the taste of being included in the divine life of self-giving love. They have been welcomed into the Father's house when they welcome one another in love. They know that Father, Son and Spirit are with and in them when they are with and in one another. And this, unsurprisingly, is where Jesus then goes in chapter 15.

In sum, I am convinced that John 14 doesn't teach the common Christian misconception of going-to-heaven-when-you-die in any straightforward sense (for more on this, see my earlier series). Jesus is reassuring his disciples that the impending violence, betrayal, confusion and bereavement of the next few hours will not leave them at a loss. Though Jesus is going, the Spirit is coming, and with him the common life of love with Jesus experienced by the disciples will continue.

Jesus and climate change XV

Conclusion
Speaking of carbon-emitters and carbon-sufferers reminds us – what has the church got to do with climate change?

I submit that only a community based on love can sustain a genuine concern for justice and sustainability in the face of ecological crisis. Lots of other movements and groups do great stuff and I thank God for them. I thank God for the IPCC: on the whole, they do us all a great service, as do many others. But the desire for change, the impulse towards justice and living wisely, cannot be sustained merely by guilt over past mistakes. Even fear, which is a great motivator, in the end can just compound the problem, because we get so terrified that we’ll buy any solution, even if we have to sell our souls to get it.

Only if we are secure in the knowledge of being held in a love that will not let go, can we step out on the risky path of putting the needs of others first. Only when we know that we are deeply loved by a God who made the heavens and the earth can we move heaven and earth out of love for our neighbour. Only when we stop thinking individualistically and start thinking as a global family can we face global problems, when the ones who are suffering from our greed or thoughtlessness are not faceless strangers, but brothers and sisters. Only when we are not paralysed by fear can we be released from the chains of denial and be honest about the scope of the problem and think clearly about creative solutions. Only when staying alive is not our primary goal, can we avoid be paralysed by threats. Only when the environment is not treated as either a resource to be exploited or a god to be worshipped can we live in harmony with it. Only when we understand ourselves as God’s image on earth, a good part of the created order with the task of enjoying and serving the creation will we stop acting like we own the place, or thinking that we are a disease that needs to be purged. Only when we see the world as a gift entrusted to our care, as the realm of God’s coming glory, as our future home, will we make more than cosmetic changes to our behaviour.

In God’s grace, there are many people doing good things in response to the threat of climate change and certainly most of them do not yet think of Jesus as a brother and God as their father, or believe that God raises the dead. That too is a gift from God. But only a community based on love, not guilt and fear, can sustain a genuine concern for all of God’s children, and for all of God’s world. As strange as it may sound, I believe that the church is the hope of the world.* The church is what God is doing now. God likes to work in surprising ways. He used a poor marginalised Jewish peasant on the outskirts of the Roman empire to turn the world upside down. He won his greatest victory through a shameful death. What is God doing now? He’s building a community full of broken and hurting people, but a community that has started to taste what it’s like to be healed.

If you’ve never done so, then I’d like to invite you to come and taste this community at your local church. If you've had disappointing experiences before, remember, this ought to be the community that does failure and repentance and new beginnings well. Come and see whether God might be at work in surprising ways. Come and be healed. Come and become a healer. Come and be part of God’s renovation.
*Of course, Christ is the hope of the world, but the community of his followers is the sign and foretaste of his coming presence and rule.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; IX(b); X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV.

Heaven: not the end of the World XIII

Aliens and strangers
Augustine writes movingly of the civitas Dei peregrina, the pilgrim City of God. By this, he refers to that society of people scattered among the nations on earth who love God more than self, who glory in him, rather than seeking their own glory, who confess Christ and yearn for home, finding themselves homeless wanderers in this world. Indeed, the Latin term peregrina, often translated 'pilgrim' might perhaps be better rendered 'resident alien' or 'sojourner'. It is a word closer to the experience of Tom Hanks in The Terminal than the merry pilgrim-cum-tourists of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

To confess Christ is to put yourself on the wrong side of those powers that crucified him, and so to find oneself misunderstood as a rebel. Misunderstood, because just as Christ was a prophet calling the nation back to its true identity, calling humanity back to its Creator, so those who take up their cross and follow him are doing so out of faithfulness to that Creator and thus in solidarity with the groaning creation.

And like the creation, those with the Spirit - the firstfruits of the future presence of God - yearn for the redemption of our bodies, for a transformed world where death is no more, where Christ's gracious kingdom is unopposed, where the riches of God's kindness are poured out with unspeakable joy. We long for the day when the oppressor is no more and the earth is inherited by the meek.

Because of this, we can never feel at home in a world where the rich devour the poor, where unborn strangers are turned back at the borders of life, where Christ is crowned with thorns and anointed with spittle. We are aliens, citizens of the civitas Dei peregrina.

But this is not because our home is elsewhere. It is elsewhen.

And so I wonder whether when Christians are called 'aliens and strangers', this is less like the Jewish exiles in Babylon, who pined for Zion and could not sing for grief, and more like Abraham. Abraham and his immediate descendents are repeatedly called 'aliens' and 'strangers' (Gen 17.8; 21.23, 34; 23.4; 26.3; 28.4; 37.1), though they are already living in the land that God had promised them. Though strangers, the land belongs to them by promise.

For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

- 1 Corinthians 3.21-23

Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI.
Ten points for guessing the country in the above pic.

Moltmann on dualism

In the world of late antiquity, Christianity encountered the Platonic dualism of soul and body in the form of the Gnostic contempt for the body, and its other-worldly longing for redemption. The soul, condemned to life-long incarceration in the body, yearns to be freed from this prison. It does not long for the prison to be changed into a home in which it likes to live. In this gnostic form, the Christian hope no longer gazes forward to a future when everything will be created anew. It looks upwards, to the soul’s escape from the body and from this earth, to the haven of blessed spirits.’

- Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 90.

Ten points for naming the city whose medieval wall I was standing on to take this pic. I'm still updating the leaderboard and links for these points.

Heaven: not the end of the world VII

Heaven is a place on earth
The story so far...
I've argued that going to 'heaven', despite common Christian usage, isn't our final destination and hope. Instead, it most commonly refers to the skies, then is used (perhaps metaphorically) as the dwelling place of God. This latter use is then extended to serve as a circumlocution for God. Therefore, we can speak of 'heaven' (i.e. God) as the agent, not destination, of Christian hope. Being citizens of heaven thus means not so much wishing to go there, but the security of expecting a saviour from there.

Heaven on earth
For many people, the final images of the Bible are amongst the most moving.

"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away." - Rev 21.3-4

All that is wrong with the world will be over. The absence of God will be healed, and with it all its symptoms: death and her children mourning and crying and pain. If anything sounds so wonderful as to be called 'heavenly', it is this. Yet notice the image used to picture this: "And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." (Rev 21.2) The direction is not us going up to heaven, but heaven coming down to earth. It is the marriage of heaven and earth, of God with his people and creation. The waiting is over; here comes the bride! The earth is pictured as the location for this triumphant and joyfully tear-jerking picture.

Now the images of Revelation are not meant to be taken woodenly and we must beware pressing details too closely. However, notice Revelation 5.10: "You have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth." There is neither space - nor I suspect reader patience - to work through Revelation in detail, yet to briefly answer one further common reading of heaven-as-destination, the images of the heavenly court worshipping the one on the throne in Rev 4 & 5 are (a) not the final picture, that is reserved until Rev 21 &22 and (b) most straightforwardly read as angelic beings, not humans, esp since at this point in the picture, there are still creatures "in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea" (Rev 5.13).

The God who made a good world does not intend to give up on it, to snatch us away to be somewhere else and leave it like a sinking ship. For that would be to admit defeat, to merely salvage some small good out of a wreckage.
Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI. Ten points for naming the country in the picture.

Heaven: not the end of the world VI

Citizens of heaven
This series has been investigating the common assumption that at the heart of Christian hope is a future spent in heaven with God, whether this is immediately upon death or is the longer term destination of the faithful. For many people, belief in a heavenly destination is found in Philippians 3.20-21:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

A common way of reading the phrase 'citizens of heaven' is that Christians are in exile from our homeland, waiting to go home. I will deal with the theme of exile and being aliens in a future post, but for the moment let's take a closer look at these verses.

What is the logic of Paul's little narrative found in these two verses? The idea of being a citizen of Rome would have been very familiar to his readers in Philippi, which was a town settled in order to house veterans from the Roman army, heroes of the empire, who have served for twenty-five years and were then rewarded with land and houses. However, rather than returning to Rome (or going there for the first time - many legionaries were from conquered lands, and military service was a way of long-term social climbing), the empire would simultaneously reward its servants and avoid congestion in the already over-crowded captial by sending its citizens to specially designated colonial outposts, such as Philippi. These were cities with a special status, since their citizens were citizens of Rome and so enjoyed all the benefits that brought. Not only was there not room for more population growth in Rome, but this policy had the positive effect of expanding the empire through having loyal citizens scattered throughout its length and breadth.

The outcome of being citizens of Rome was not ultimately to return there at the end of one's days. Instead, on the one hand, citizens were to be part of the grand project of civilisating (so it was thought) the world under the benefits of Roman rule ("What did the Romans ever do for us?..."). On the other hand, if the city were under threat, their special status guaranteed a swift response from Rome in protection of its citizens. Philippians therefore could have proudly boasted that they were citizens of Rome and it was from there they expected a saviour, Caesar the Lord, if trouble ever appeared.

Paul's message takes this Philippian pride in Roman citizenship and subverts it with a new citizenship, a new source of hope. Again, this is not the hope of returning (or going) to heaven in the end, but the confidence that comes from knowing that a mighty Lord will arrive to bring vindication and final security to his subjects. We are citizens of heaven, an outpost of heaven's own colonial project - not the expansion of an aggressive empire of exploitation, but the liberation of an earth for too long held by enemy occupying forces of sin and death. Just as Philippi was meant to bring a little of Rome to Greece, the church is to bring a little of the life of God, a heavenly life, into our local area. We are citizens of heaven, and it is from there that we await a Saviour.

Indeed, to follow this passage to its end, the final goal is not going to heaven, but the consummation of heaven's rule on earth ("Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..."), where the last enemy, death, is overthrown in resurrection life.

Resurrection, not going to heaven, is the Christian hope. The return of Christ is not to take us off somewhere else, but to make his home here, and where he is at home, so are we. It is to this we will turn next.
Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI. Ten points for the town in this pic.
PS Ancient historians, please correct any details re Roman citizenship.

Welcome home Matheson

After a year drifting to and fro through the intellectual wilderness of Oxford, Dr Matheson Russell returns to fight the forces of evil closer to home. Welcome home, Matt!

PS This another chance for those friends who rarely or never comment. Don't be shy - leave Matt a message.

PPS Another pic of Matt.

Where When is home?

There are so many otherwise great hymns that lose it in the final verse, suggesting a gnostic flight from the world into a 'home' elsewhere, beyond the skies. Revelation speaks of a 'new heavens and a new earth', and pictures the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth (not the other way) - I take this (amongst other verses - this probably needs a series of its own) to mean that Christians are hoping for the resurrection of the dead onto a restored/renovated earth, not a flight off onto another world or into a disembodied 'spiritual' existence with God.

Compounding the error, many hymns seem to place this hope at the point of death, such that death becomes a doorway into this 'heavenly bliss'. While death for the believer is indeed accompanied by the promise that we will be 'with' Christ, this seems to be very much a sub-theme of the New Testament. More important is what happens after the 'afterlife' - namely, real life once more in a perfected body upon a liberated earth. Perhaps once again, there is a series of posts waiting to be done here.

For many hymns, perhaps a simple correction is available: simply replacing a locative reference with a temporal one. Instead of our hope being located elsewhere, it might be less confusing to sing of its being located elsewhen. I'd love to start compiling a list of hymns that could be improved on this point. Any suggestions?
BTW ten points for picking this Sydney landmark. Twenty if you're not from Sydney.

Will Newtown be in Heaven?

I heard a great issues paper today from Evan McFarlane called 'Will Newtown be in Heaven?'* His answer, roughly speaking, was 'of course not - because heaven is not the eschatological goal. But Newtown will (in some form) be radically renewed in the eschaton, along with the rest of God's creation.'

This conclusion, though familiar to some, is for many others still something of a shock. The belief in 'heaven when you die' as the Christian hope runs deep and dies hard. I was leading a Bible study discussion recently on the Christian hope based on 1 Corinthians 15 and the idea of something awaiting us other than flight to an otherworldly bliss seemed novel to the entire group (hi guys if you're reading this!). I was asked what I called my newfangled theological position. I could think of no other name than 'the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come'.

The worst culprits on this matter are generally our songs. One of my favourites has this clanger:
When from the dust of death I arise
To claim my home beyond the skies...
Simply substituting beneath for beyond would be sufficient. At least this song has a resurrection (from the dust of death I arise), which puts it streets ahead of so many others in which death is simply the doorway to a heavenly bliss beyond.
* Newtown is a suburb of Sydney and was the location for the delivery of Evan's paper.