We are actors thrust upon a stage without a script. We have the first few acts of the play, and some inkling of the exciting but ominous end. So, how do we fill in the remainder of the play?

In the last post, I talked about why and how heaven shapes our life on earth. I used the metaphor of a stage play, where we have the script of the first few acts and some inklings about the end of the story, and have to improvise to fill in the gap. We have 2 rules: (1) to be faithful to the events of the story as it starts and ends…the story has to make sense as we move from scene to scene and; (2) to make sure our improvisation keeps faith with the meaning of the story contained in the script that we already have…our improvisation can’t just make up any old meaning – it has to make fit with the start and the end.

Improvisation
The problem is, most of us don’t like improvisation. So we avoid it in a few reliable ways. One of the most common ways is to worship the play. We come up with a script that uses the same language, plot, characters that are contained in the first few acts that we have been given. Because it’s all we’ve got, we stick to it rigidly. On the metaphorical stage, we endlessly repeat the first few acts. Meanwhile, the audience has walked out from boredom. Another common strategy is to ignore the play. We get fed up with sticking to the script and just have fun. I mean, something good is happening at the end, isn’t it? And repeating the same old lines was fairly boring and frankly some important parts of the story just don’t make sense in this day and age. So, we concentrate on amusing ourselves, and desperately trying to keep the audience’s attention. The last tried and true strategy is to watch the play. Improvising is too hard, and the antics of the worshippers and the ignorers is too much to bear, so we sit it out in the seats.

Note, this metaphor is not of a church service or gathering, but of our whole common life: discipleship, work, witness, worship…everything. We, the followers of Jesus, having been handed the Old Testament, the life of Jesus, the witness of the early church and some inklings of the end…tend towards slavish imitation, wilful ignorance, or surrender of our spiritual inheritance. But these 3 approaches aren’t the only way. Improvisation is the way. Improvisation isn’t making it up. It isn’t starting with nothing, it stays faithful to the message of what has been handed to us. But we take account of the changing stage on which we now find ourselves, and also keeps faithful to the ‘end’ that we know is coming and is already here. Our life here on earth, if we want to follow Jesus, has to make sense not only in terms of the EVENTS of the story of God and his heaven, but it also needs to make sense in terms of the MEANING of the story of God and his heaven.

Regardless of what view of heaven we have, it affects our practice of church, discipleship and mission. This is what eschatology is all about. Humans naturally work towards an end. We are narrative beings. We tell ourselves, sometimes literally, big and small stories. All these stories have ends (actual events & also meaning) which we bend our lives towards. If the story you tell yourself is one in which you are a hero, your life will bend towards egoism and heroic deeds. If the story you tell yourself is one in which you are a passive actor, then you will probably not act to take responsibility of your life.

In the same way, my view of the ‘end’, of ‘heaven’, shapes the way I live now as a disciple of Jesus. We instinctively work to bring about the ‘end’ that we desire or have been taught to desire. I think this is a human characteristic, regardless of the particular religious commitments we hold. Even for the thoroughgoing atheist, she has an ‘end’, a purpose of human existence, in mind, and her life bends toward that end.

If you believe that heaven is a place where you don’t have a body, then in this life the body won’t be a thing of value, and there’s not reason to value it. If you believe heaven will be an individual state of mind, psychology will be important to you. If you believe heaven is populated by your enemies, then that will transform your treatment of your enemies. If you believe that heaven is where people are physically beautiful, then the ugly will always be slightly suspect. And let’s not forget that these beliefs are not the ones we know we have, but the ones that lie deep inside us, often unconscious.

This characteristic of ours, to bend our lives toward the end, towards heaven’; this is the reason Jesus spends so much time talking about the ‘kingdom of God’, or the ‘kingdom of heaven’. He knows that our view of these ultimate events/meanings deeply shapes the way we live now. The Israelites thought the kingdom would be a place of freedom from oppression from foreign rulers – Jesus says the kingdom is within you. Children were exploited, ignored, seen as spiritually immature – Jesus stakes our entry to the kingdom on imitating them. We think we can get away with apathy toward the poor because God has forgiven us – Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

I’ll write a post someday about how our view of heaven affects our practice of church and mission (and vice versa), but in the meantime…What’s your picture of heaven?

What are we waiting for? And what are we going to do about it in the meantime?

Those are the two questions which shape this book. First, it is about the ultimate future hope held out in the Christian gospel; the hope, that is, for ‘salvation’, ‘resurrection’, ‘eternal life’…Second, it is about the discovery of hope within the present world: about the practical ways in which hope can come alive for communities and individuals…(Surprised by Hope, Tom Wright)

Most Christians don’t think about heaven, except that we would like to be there. Most of us do, anyway, and we tend to think it will something we will enjoy. We are put off by the fact that other people think it might be: (1) endless praise and worship services or (2) small group discussions about social justice while crocheting organic smocks or (3) theological lectures or…you get the picture. Other Christians think about heaven a lot though, for different reasons. The most pressing reason is that we want people that God loves, which is everyone, to be with God when they die. I think this is a good reason to think about heaven, but there are also other reasons to consider what we mean by ‘heaven’.

Surprised by Hope
Tom Wright stirred the heavenly cauldron recently, as he is wont to do, with a book about heaven called “Surprised by Hope”. I first heard a radio snippet of his views on heaven which was transcribed for an article in Time Magazine. In the radio snippet I heard, he said that heaven is not what happens after we die, but that it is “life after life after death”. This repetitive sentence momentarily confused me, which I don’t cope with well. So I bought the book.¹ The book explains what he meant by “life after life after death”. Heaven, in Wright’s view, is not the state that we go to immediately after we die, but a later event which happens when God brings all history to a close, renewing as God has promised. A disembodied state after death may be what happens…but it’s not heaven. It’s just a disembodied state after death. Heaven is what happens when God renews all Creation, as the end of Revelation indicates. When that happens, Wright says, we won’t be disembodied souls floating around, but in some way we will be living life in real bodies as God intended – radically different from how things are now, but in some ways radically the same.

Heaven Here on Earth
All very interesting. I like interesting thoughts, and so I’m a sucker for books like that. But does talk of heaven matter now? I think it does. And not just because I want everyone to be there. It matters to how we live our lives now. And no, I’m not saying that we earn our way into heaven by being extra good in our life now.

I think it matters because of 2 things: books and ends.

‘End’ is a funny word, elastic word. In a story, like the Bible or whatever story, ‘end’ usually means the chronological finish, when all the events have happened. In Peter and the Wolf, the end of the story is the procession of Peter, the animals, the hunters and the wolf with the quacking duck inside it. That’s where the story leaves us. But ‘end’ also means the ‘purpose’, the meaning, the message of the story. That, of course, is a matter for interpretation. What is the ‘end’ of Peter and the Wolf? Chronologically, it is the procession with Peter at the head. Meaningfully, it is the triumph of youthful risk over elderly caution. Or the success of nonviolent means of defeating your enemy. Or, to stretch things, a cautionary fable that mother wolves tell their wolflings. Both ‘ends’ have to make sense for the story to ‘work’. Chronologically, the end of Peter and the Wolf would be a nonsense if Peter played billiards with the wolf after capturing him. Meaningfully, our interpretation would be a nonsense if we decided the story’s meaning was to listen to your elders’ advice, because that is exactly what Peter refuses to do, and the story vindicates him.

So, for discussions about ‘heaven’, the ‘end’ is what happens chronologically, but also what heaven means, what it is, where it is, our place and part in it. Why is this important? Now we need to think about stories, which for me are often found in books.

Books – because yes, they are heavenly. If you have ever read a book, or watched a movie, or listened to someone tell a story, you will be familiar with the following narrative device. I can’t remember its name, but it goes like this: at the start of the story, a small glance at the chronological end of the story is revealed. For example, in the opening scenes of recent film Tomorrow When the War Began, the main character (Ellie) is narrating the story from the end, via a video recording. Then the story goes back to the events that led up to that, every now and then returning to Ellie’s narration. The effect is get us, the viewer/reader, to wonder how the story is going to get to the end. Given what we have seen of the end, and given that we know the initial events in the story, how will we end up at the end? In Tomorrow, the end sliver gives us the picture that something violent, bloody, unexpected has happened, and Ellie is a world-weary, tired but intrepid character. But the events at the start of the story show her as a care-free, happy, idealistic character. Our interest is piqued…how will the Ellie character be transformed from care-free to world-weary? What events will shape her? How will she respond? We are interested because our interest in the chronological end (how will the story make its way to the last events) but also in the meaningful end (what the story’s message is).

Our Role in Hope on Earth
Christianity is the same. Our story (the Bible) has given us slivers of what the end is, in both chronological and meaningful sense. In the book of Revelation, this is most clear, with graphic passages seemingly about the end of the world.² We also know some of the initial events that have set us on our way to the end – Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and the early church. But what will happen in-between?  To use a oft-used metaphor, we are actors thrust upon a stage without a script. We have the first few acts of the play, and some inkling of the exciting but ominous end. So, how do we fill in the remainder of the play?

Stay tuned…

1. Heaven is a large, dusty, wooden room with ceiling high bookshelves, a comfy recliner-type couch next a small table with one of those Tim-Tam packs that never runs out, except it’s Cadbury, and large cold glasses of milk…and no doors…so no-one can interrupt…
2. There is a fair bit of debate about whether Revelation is describing what the literal end of the world will be, or whether it is an allegorical way for the writer, John, to describe the society of his day. My opinion is that he is primarily describing the Roman Empire of his day, but also saying that ‘empires’ like Rome will be present in all times. When it comes to the questions of whether he is describing literal ‘end of the world’ events I think that is not his first concern, but I think we can safely say that John definitely thinks there will be an end to the human story

One of the factors in the recent resurgence of interest in ANZAC Day has been the corresponding decline in mainstream religious participation. In 2005, the New Scientist magazine carried a story about a “religion gene”:

Until about 25 years ago, scientists assumed that religious behaviour was simply the product of a person’s socialisation – or “nurture”. But more recent studies, including those on adult twins who were raised apart, suggest genes contribute about 40% of the variability in a person’s religiousness.

Whatever this actually means in practice, it’s clear that we long to believe in a higher, larger truth than ourselves, and more significantly, to participate in rituals that point to that truth. I think that the resurgence of ANZAC memorials and pilgrimages to Gallipoli has its source in this reality. In short, when the religious life of transcendent traditions¹ declines, civil religions take their place. And that is what the resurgence of ANZAC Day is about – civil religion.

Rituals, processions, remembering the dead, even readings from Christian scripture (addressed in Jarrod’s article) – its all there. Now, my point is not that ceremonies which are not explicitly Christian are bad – of course not, ritual is a part of human life, whether externally religious or not. My problem is that such ceremonies induct us into a positive remembrance of war, verging at times on outright celebration, as we revere Gallipoli as a “national creation story”.

None of what I’m saying here negates these facts: that Australian soldiers possess courage; that we should recognise their suffering and bravery; that it is possible that war, like all hardship, can reveal positives in the human character; and that there should be some sort of ritual to remember these things. I affirm these things, and I admire the courage of those who go to war, even as I do not admire the task they fulfil.

But here we come to the nub of the problem. Australia has begun to see our warring history, and Gallipoli in particular, as emblematic of our character as a nation: a place and time where mateship was birthed, as a model for young people to venerate and aspire to, a place wherein the purifying violence of Suvla Bay a nation was truly formed. I do not affirm these things. I do not believe these things are healthy, because they essentially argue that the violence of war is a stable foundation for human relationships, individual character & vocation, and nationhood.

For Christians who follow a Jesus who died willingly to save the world (rather than kill to save it), any memorialising of war is a challenge to our faith. So what kind of memorial could I participate it? From a Christian point of view, any war is a violation of God’s creation, and God weeps over all those who die, and over all those whose participation in war has damaged them. Therefore I would like to see a memorial that remembers, and recognises, the dead from all the wars that Australia has fought in: from the Boer War through to Afghanistan and Iraq. I would like to see a ritual in which the dead of our enemies are brought to our attention, as well as our own dead. That way, ANZAC Day would truly be a remembrance of the horror of war

I finish with this quote from Jarrod McKenna’s own article:

If we say fighting is wrong, we spit in the face of all those soldiers who have bravely served their countries. But if we say the way to fight is with violence,then like those in Matthew’s passion account, we spit in the face of Christ. Do not judge those who did not know there was a better way. But it is a judgment of our Christianity if we remain silent as our governments sacrifice trillions of dollars and the precious lives of young people on the altar of unwinnable wars.

1. Those religious traditions with a belief in some kind of deity who includes, but also exists outside, human experience

A couple of weekends ago, I went to hear Paul Roe from Cornerstone speak at an event in Bendigo. He spoke on Jesus’ ‘unpublished life’; the life until Jesus turned 30, of which we know very little. But we also had a conversation about Australia’s Christian history as well. Paul is conspiring to build a museum of Australian Christian history in Canberra, on the site of a planned national cathedral that was never built.

And no wonder – Australians have never had the ‘Manifest Destiny’ mindset of the US, where many believe America has a unique role to play in the salvation of the world, although some Australian Christians of a Zionist persuasion celebrate the charge of the Light Horse as the dominant factor in the establishment of modern Israel. But we do have a Christian history, most clearly seen in the emphatic but sometimes morally ambiguous annals of church agencies who reached out to the poor in the name of Jesus. We have heroes like John Flynn (Flying Doctor Service) and Mary MacKillop, who taught and cared for the most marginal Australians. But the churches were also complicit in the ‘Stolen Generation’ episodes.

Paul Roe’s main point was that Australia is losing a key chunk of its story, and that it needs to be told, without either hagiography or disdain. I agree. His desire for the museum in Canberra, as I see it, is a desire for public storytelling. My question is about whether a public museum, which will always be prone to becoming static, can tell a story. The ‘problem’ with the Jesus story is that it lives in those who follow him, whereas museums do not. They have a tendency to become static without massive & regular injections of money, whereas the community of Jesus survives simply wherever followers are present.

But, to side with Paul for a moment, we are surrounded by architectural and visual storytelling: in skyscrapers, parliament houses, advertising etc. All these put forward a worldview. Try standing under a skyscraper and insisting that money means nothing – the building itself argues against you. In this context, does it not make sense to create an architectural and visual story of the Christian worldview? And there we have the main problem; that phrase the Christian worldview. The best museums express a variety of worldviews in architecture and exhibitions – an authentically Christian public story would need to do the same. Public storytelling is crucial, but it rides on the back of the every day storytelling in the words and lives of followers of Jesus everywhere.