Let's start with some backstory. A few years back, some friends of mine began teaching a new doctrine (well, new to me, anyway) that offended me, and not just a little bit.
Over-simplified, they began teaching that since we (already) have eternal life, therefore eternity is in play now, and therefore (and here's where I had trouble), we don't need to physically die. Eternal life can apply to our bodies, not just to our spirits.
These were people whom I know personally (some of them pretty wel), people I have learned to trust. I couldn't just blow it off as foolishness.
I was raised in a mainline denominational church. This would have been a scandal in that context, of course.
Then I spent a bunch of years in fundamentalist evangelical congregations. They might have used the word "heresy."
But new revelation is kind of always scandalous to the previous generation, the previous move of God.
So I set out to prove that doctrine wrong. "Everybody knows you die, and then you go to Heaven!" That was my first problem. Things that begin with "Everybody knows" are pretty often messed up, and almost never as simple as they seem.
I put several months of study, interviews, prayer into trying to prove them wrong. I failed. I have been unable to prove that doctrine wrong.
I did not, however, prove them right. So I've left this is the "We'll see" category. But I didn't let it go. So every so often, I brought it out and discussed it with Father. There was a lot of re-hashing the same questions, the same objections. He mostly just smiled and nodded, but at least we enjoyed our time together.
Then one day, I think it was the nine-hundred-and-eleventy-third time I brought it up, he spoke.
"You're missing the point here, Son." And suddently I realized that if my primary concern about Eternity is when it starts, or what the transition points are like, then I've put my attention on the wrong subjects.
We have (more to the point, I have) more important responsibilities than fussing about whether my body will grow old and die, or whether I'll pull an Enoch, or whether it'll be something else entirely. I am (we are) still charged with praying, both in word and deed, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."
That's where my attention needs to be: the work of the Kingdom here and now. The Great Commission still stands, after all.
So will my body live forever? Honestly, I don't much care any more. My Dad & I have work to do here & now, and at some point (a point that he is responsible for, not me), our partnership will change perhaps both in object and location, but that's not at all my job now.
Somebody a whole lot smarter than me once said something about "So whether we live or we die, we are the Lord's." Maybe he was onto something.
Thursday
Big Screen Day Priorities
I found myself thinking about the Judgment of our works that Revelation chapter 20 talks about. I refer to this as big-screen day. I don't know why, but I suspect it's going to be public. I imagine you might be there when it's my turn to have my life displayed on the big screen.
By the way, it seems pretty clear that what we repent of is forgotten. So it would not surprise me if the only things listed in the books are the things that never needed forgiving, never needed repenting. In other words, the books might just record the things we actually did right. Just a thought.
So I was imagining big-screen day. I was imagining it was my turn to be on the screen, and I was imagining lots of people watching the strange little details of my life.
It seems logical to me that when it is your turn to have your life displayed on the big screen, that I will be distracted by the king who has his hands on the controls. Nothing personal, I promise you. But it really is all about him!
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