Recently I was asked whether I believe in an afterlife. The apparent reason is that my preaching and writing focus pretty much on living a Christ-like life here and now. Still, the question is valid, and I will address it.
I will restrict
my comments to what I find in Scripture, setting aside what others may have
“found” (sic) in Scripture. In particular, I will set aside the eschatological model
created by John Nelson Darby (an attorney; not a biblical scholar) in the mid-nineteenth
century, and the spinoffs from his model. The spinoff versions[1]
vary greatly; nevertheless, they all are dependent on Darby’s work and together
constitute the default eschatology accepted, albeit uncritically (in many cases
I would even say assumed), by the overwhelming majority of Christians today.
I find no evidence that Darby’s model, nor any part of it, was articulated prior to his creation of it less than two centuries ago. Nor do I find any earlier eschatology that takes unrelated texts from as varied sources as Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew 24, Luke 17, I Thessalonians 4, et. al., and dumps them randomly into Revelation like a boy rolling his marbles across a hardwood floor. Revelation is complete and can stand on its own as is. It needs no help from Ezekiel or Paul or the rest.
That being
said, there can be little doubt that the New Testament projects some
manifestation of a transcendent, eternal existence characterized as utopian perfection
(an anthropomorphic assumption) lived in the full, conscious awareness of God’s
presence.
Two factors
pretty much form the basis of my understanding of that existence as presented
in Christian Scripture. First, the language is from Jewish messianic hopes that
emerged in the post-exilic era (5th and 6th centuries BCE).
Those hopes had a distinctive military and political quality of empire, with an
ultimate hope for a world dominant kingdom. That didn’t happen under Jesus.
Christians do
see Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic hopes, but in a way totally
unexpected by Israel. Within today’s dominant Christian eschatology, Jesus’
role as Messiah was all about individual salvation through faith in him as the
qualification for heaven after death. But there will be a “second coming” in
which things will be different!
In today’s default Christian eschatology there’s little
focus on issues of justice and peace here and now because it is understood that
nothing can be done until Christ returns to fulfill Israel’s original messianic
expectation. For now, it’s virtually all about getting into heaven and being
nice until Jesus returns.
The people
of Israel, on the other hand, continue the original hope, even as a secular nation
of Israel exists separate and distinct from that hope.
Christians
have joined in that some-day hope of a world-dominant kingdom headed by a
returning Jesus, but into that hope they have inserted ancient apocalyptic imagery
that projects a cosmic, metaphysical quality that inspires post-apocalyptic movies
and video games. I find nothing in the Christian Scriptures to validate such a scenario
except metaphorically.
It is the
abundance of metaphor that is the second factor that informs my understanding
of biblical eschatology. The metaphors are rich and powerful, so long as they
remain metaphors. Once they are squeezed into some conjectural literalism, they
take on a fantasy quality. John Dominic Crossan’s quote comes to mind: “My
point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we
are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them
symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
The
metaphors are necessary because what they communicate is a reality that
transcends not only time and space, but also the human capacity to comprehend. In
simple terms, God’s promise of "heaven" (again, a metaphor that has taken on anthropomorphic literal qualities) will exceed anything we can imagine, even
when our imagination is based on metaphoric streets of gold and walls of
diamond.
The
metaphors are so rich and powerful that I have no illusion I can comprehend or
even imagine their fulfillment. But I trust God for that unknowable eternity.
Having
trusted in the faithfulness of God’s promise, and having accepted Jesus as the
Way, the Truth, and the Life referenced in that promise, I leave it in God’s
hands. Now I am free to follow Jesus’ Way, Truth, and Life here and now: “Truly I tell you,
just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,
you did it to me” (Matthew
25:40). The current obsession
among some Christians to figure out all the details is a distraction from our
calling thus to follow.
Beyond what
I can control here and now, whatever God has in mind will come to pass, it will
surpass anything I can anticipate, and none of my pondering (or yours) will
influence when or how it will happen.
Let’s,
while we wait, be about imitating Christ in our personal and community lives.
Together in the Walk,
Jim
[1] Including, but not limited to:
Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth (I have met and interacted with
Lindsey, and I admire and respect him as a Christian. I just disagree with his
eschatology), the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry
Jenkins. There are other expression of today’s dominant Christian eschatology.
