(Ir)religiosity

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I finally got around to picking up a copy of N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope and I’m almost done.  His deconstruction of the typical concept of heaven as something “up there,” or, as I’ve said, an orgy of eternal bliss, really resonates with me.  Instead of some sort of physical place that persons are transported to after death, heaven, according to Wright, is the ultimate culmination of God’s process of restoration and recreation, a process that began with the Resurrection.  I like that.

I am a little unsure about the cosmological implications of his argument and how some of these things work practically, especially viz. his assertion of actual, physical, bodily resurrection.  He makes it clear that everything, at least in his opinion, hinges upon this.  I’m not so sure.  But that does not at all negate the usefulness of his questioning and reformulating some traditional Christians ideals.  Personally, I think the questioning and re-appropriating can be done without insisting on some of the supposition that he does.  But that’s a different post.

Like I said, the case that Wright makes boldly denounces some of the themes and elements that the Christian Right has latched onto over the last 20-30 years, things like the rapture, the second coming (though Wright plays with that a bit, rather than simply rejecting it), dispensationalism — all those sort of Left Behind Type things.  This is great and I think it needs to be done.  In many ways I’m willing to go even further than Wright does by jettisoning some of these concepts altogether.

In an interesting way, Wright’s whole argument relates to a parable that Peter Rollins has recently written, for his forthcoming book The Orthodox Heretic (there’s a really awesome audio version here).  In a way that only Rollins can, a familiar theme and idea, in this case the rapture, is turned completely on its head and reversed.  In the event of this iconoclasm, meaning emerges, unveiling a small piece of truth.

Just as it was written by those prophets of old, the last days of the Earth overflowed with suffering and pain. In those dark days a huge pale horse rode through the Earth with Death upon its back and Hell in its wake. During this great tribulation the Earth was scorched with the fires of war, rivers ran red with blood, the soil withheld its fruit and disease descended like a mist. One by one all the nations of the Earth were brought to their knees.

Far from all the suffering, high up in the heavenly realm, God watched the events unfold with a heavy heart. An ominous silence had descended upon heaven as the angels witnessed the Earth being plunged into darkness and despair. But this could only continue for so long for, at the designated time, God stood upright, breathed deeply and addressed the angels,

“The time has now come for me to separate the sheep from the goats, the healthy wheat from the inedible chaff”

Having spoken these words God slowly turned to face the world and called forth to the church with a booming voice,

“Rise up and ascend to heaven all of you who have who have sought to escape the horrors of this world by sheltering beneath my wing. Come to me all who have turned from this suffering world by calling out ‘Lord, Lord’”.

In an instant millions where caught up in the clouds and ascended into the heavenly realm. Leaving the suffering world behind them.

Once this great rapture had taken place God paused for a moment and then addressed the angels, saying,

“It is done, I have separated the people born of my spirit from those who have turned from me. It is time now for us leave this place and take up residence in the Earth, for it is there that we shall find our people. The ones who would forsake heaven in order to embrace the earth. The few who would turn away from eternity itself to serve at the feet of a fragile, broken life that passes from existence in but an instant”.

And so it was that God and the heavenly host left that place to dwell among those who had rooted themselves upon the earth. Quietly supporting the ones who had forsaken God for the world and thus who bore the mark God. The few who had discovered heaven in the very act of forsaking it.

That’s pretty powerful I think.  And that’s where Wright and Rollins converge — on the firm belief that only in the act of forsaking our ideas of heaven, salvation, and eternity do we take hold of the life that is truly life.

What do you think?

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