Chad Lewis, a pastor at Sojourn, wrote a post way back in January entitled The Grass isn’t Greener. In it, he reflects on his life, where he has been and what he has done, and concludes along with Paul that we should “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord… count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”
Chad says:
“We were not created for this world so the next time you find yourself useless because you are thinking that being somewhere else would solve all your problems, remember that your problems and heartaches will always go with you. However, the God of our fathers will never change and He can meet us in our time of deepest need.”
Check it out by clicking the link above.
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Um, actually, we were created for this world. See Genesis 1, Revelation 21-22.
I think his argument, and mine, is that this world is not the end-goal. I think that’s specifically what Revelation 21-22 is saying. Also, the overarching Biblical narrative or recreation and being sojourners and aliens.
I would argue that at the least, we were created for Eden (Gen 1), but at best, and truly, we were created for something even greater than Eden (Rev 21-22). All creation is groaning with us until it too finds its restoration– which we can only taste now in the present.
If we take this world as the end-goal, then it makes no sense for Jesus to say we aren’t of this world. Neither does the language of being sojourners and aliens.
To put it more succinctly, and in Chad’s context. We aren’t made for this broken, sinful world.
Maybe we’re saying the same thing. But this world is the end goal. That’s why we and all creation groan. God made it; God cares about it; God’s not going to let it go to pot; God’s committed to restoring His creation, not jettisoning it. Humanity was created to fill the earth and transform the whole earth into an Eden. That purpose got thwarted by sin, but God’s not letting it go. The goal will be reached; sin will be removed; humanity will rule the earth as renewed images of God again. We’ll spend eternity on this planet.
But of course, the world is not the way it’s supposed to be. Sin has invaded; it is the foreigner; it must be eradicated.
I take the sojourner and alien language (along with Jesus’ words) to be referring to a moral antipathy, not a physical or spatial one. We are “not of this world” when “world” means the system of moral rebellion against God that characterizes much of the earth at this moment in history. But it was not always so; and it will not always be so.
But I guess my problem with the language in Chad’s context is that he’s using creation language (what we were “made for”) and “world” right next to each other. To me this implies the creation itself, the planet earth as the place of man’s habitation. “World” in the sense of moral rebellion is another matter. If that’s what he means, I think it’s confusing.
P.S. that smiley in my post is an accident.
I do think we are saying the same thing, but in different ways.
I also think that I have the advantage of having heard Chad preach, and knowing that he would agree with what you just said. For example, the essential idea behind the cultivate beauty festival that is going on at the church this weekend and all this month is restoration, of creation, relationships, etc.