Chapter 4: Unlock the potential of the universe

The Theology of the Future

"... the Easter resurrection of Jesus is the prolepsis-- that is a concrete anticipation-- of a large reality yet to come in the future, namely, the eschatological Kingdom of God (the new creation) in which all the dead will rise.. the still outstanding future of God reaches back into the present moment with the power to free us from our past and open us toward a new future... the future arrival of the consummate kingdom of God will finish what has been in progress all along, namely, God's continuous creating of the world out of an inexhaustible supply of divine love" - Ted Peters, theologian, summarizing the thought of his mentor in memorial, Wolfhart Pannenberg, theologian.

ACTION AND BECOMING

Now we know who we are to become: more like Jesus. What of action? What are we to DO? Does doing matter? How does God use doing?

I believe the message of the Bible is that through becoming the people that God has called us to become, we become the healing and potential-unlocking power in the world. Faith without works is dead.

Our goal is to unlock the potential within ourselves, the potential of being named "Sons and Daughters of God”, our goal is to unlock that potential in the people around us, and our goal is to organize the material, the atoms in the universe, to unlock more beauty, more peace, and more of the attributes of God expressed into His creation.

What is the kingdom of God like? Jesus tells us:

"He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches." - Luke 13:18

"And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.” - Luke 13:10

The Kingdom of God is the unveiling of generative generous potential from even the smallest seed of faith. It is the rising of the world, through a small bit of leaven. The Kingdom of God, yes is the conclusion, but Jesus here emphasizes the process of the revealing of potential.

How does it happen? Through the mustard seed of our faith:

"He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” - Matthew 17:20

Most anyone would tell you that our call is more than just "being good people" - but our expressed praxis says something much different. We are called by God to have a radical imagination for what this world can be like, and to strive for it earnestly. But most of Christianity is content with too little.

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - CS Lewis

It is not an easy task to hear and respond to the calling of God. What is the calling of God for your life? It is not found in copying others, it is found through a lifetime of listening so the whisper of the Spirit. It's revealing may be fast and profound or it may take a lifetime. It will not be fully revealed until history has run its course. It is in the knocking, the seeking, that we find God. He accepts and loves all our questions.

What is my purpose in this moment? In this day? In my life?

How then shall we live? Like we are running a race. Like we are hiking a mountain. Like we are battling an enemy. Like we are shepherding a civilization. We are free. Like we are Kings and Queens. What should we do with our new freedom?

"For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another." - Galatians 5:13

"So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." - Galatians 6:10

"All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up" - 1 Corinthians 10:23

Many Christians seem happy to deal with the internal life of faith alone, asking every Sunday "how have you been prideful this past week? You should feel bad about it". But is not the heart also formed through action? The lie of Greek dualism is that all good starts in the spiritual and is diluted into the material. And that the material has no effect on the spiritual.

Other Christians are content to leave people as they are, as long as they have right actions - “as long as we make progress on social justice”. They are content for their congregants to carry-on un-transformed as long as the kids in the slums have new classrooms to learn in. This is also folly, we can not transform the world unless we are also transforming ourselves. The Gospel is the renewing of all things and people.

We are called to faith and works. Translated into English: We are called to make ourselves and other humans more like they should be, and make the world more like it should be. And we are called to try hard!

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men." - Colossians 3:2

"for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." - Philippians 2:13

"He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." - Romans 2:6-8

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it." - 1 Corinthians 9:24

Translated once more, you are called to invest into the future of humanity and the universe, and through your investment make progress towards the Kingdom of God. All glory be to God.

What is true religion? "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." James 1:26-27 makes it clear. Serve others, and become more like Jesus.

The best way to become divine partakers of the divine and actors on his behalf is to enter a deeply intimate and mimetic relationship with God. How can you be like someone if you don't know them? How can you embody an essence if you are only told facts?

We should care about what God cares about.

THE WORLD IS NOT AS GREAT AS YOU ARE BEING TOLD

So if we as Christians are here to make people more like they should be and make the world more like it should be, how are we, humanity, doing on that?

Depends on who you ask. It is true that hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of abject poverty in the past 40 years. On a number of important metrics like infant mortality we have steeply dropping rates. We haven't had a world war in 70+ years.

These technological maximalists aren't wrong about the data. The data does show, across many key metrics: infant mortality, household purchasing power, longevity of life, an improvement in our condition. And we do have technology and science to thank as well as the countless people who have dedicated their lives to creating solutions to problems.

To some the end of history feels within sight. A one world government, prosperity everywhere, peace forever. Maybe even some kind of singularity event where humans can live forever, or where we enter a "post-scarcity" civilization where everyone has everything they could want. Francis Fukuyama wrote about the "end of history" - which in our parlance means heaven. Ray Kurweil will tell you that in our lifetimes we will cure all human disease and upload our consciousness to the matrix. It's just a matter of time. Even Elon Musk will tell you that Tesla has solved the clean energy problem - just give them another 18 months.

Steven Pinker has become famous selling this particular flavor of utopianism. Even Bill Gates is a fan! It's easy to think this when you write from an affluent and cosmopolitan Manhattan condo or a pristine Ivy-league university campus (Pinker is at Harvard). But if you travel outside the bubble, you see people everywhere in pain and destitution. Travel the streets of San Francisco; just today I passed multiple people, heart-breakingly addicted to drugs. Shakily moving needles into position. Not excited about another hit: just wanting relief from not having it.

These secular dreams of heaven are potent and they capture our imaginations.

They will tell you to look at all the trendlines - "look! humans are less violent!", "look! we have more people living above the poverty line than ever before!". What are they trying to prove? It almost seems like they are trying to convince you, and themselves, that this project called modernity is still working. Some kind of humanitarian Moore's law should give us hope after all. We should feel blessed to live in such a time. Perhaps even - we get some spillover effects of that global karma. Me think they doth protest too much.

It's been almost a common thought for the past 200 years that everything is just getting better and better. This mindset even seemed to survive two world wars where the innovations from science and technology caused hundreds of millions of deaths: many of them extremely gruesome and genocidal.

But we have our own crises. Many are familiar to us: terrorism, climate change, prison reform, drug abuse, obesity. Many are known but not talked about: loneliness, depression, concentration camps, suicide. And many are barely known or talked about: sex trafficking, slavery, domestic violence, and rampant pornography. Even with the sins of man aside, it feels we have made little progress against natural disasters. Tsunami, fire, hurricanes, tornadoes ravage us. Can we stop it? Entire populations living under dictatorial, violent and oppressive regimes. Don't we all experience the truth that this world is broken and we are broken?

We are watching the decline of institutions that have brought stability for a millennia. We are seeing the rise of post-modernism and nihilism. Escapism and self-intoxication run rampant. I think this is why the end-of-history creates a huge cognitive dissonance in people. We are saying with our mouths that "everything is awesome", when in our hearts we know the world is broken and we are broken.

We are far from our utopian dream. Perhaps worse yet, we as a culture don't even believe in the future anymore.

WE ARE NO LONGER DREAMERS

For a while in the 20th century, we thought that democracy was the "best form of government, except all the others" and that every man deserved to live where they had a voice in a vote. Now we aren't so sure it's even working for us as Americans!

We used to believe that every man, woman, and child could contribute to society in a meaningful way. Now we just want to buy their compliance with universal basic income.

People 50 years ago: we believed that families thrive and are most stable in certain situations and environment (with a lot of research behind it notably). Now: anything goes and it's taboo to say otherwise.

In progressive San Francisco, abject poverty at our doorstep does not phase us. We don't care to change it. It's their choice after all.

We used to actually want this dream of post-scarcity. We used to work hard for it. And now we only write about it, and compose viral tweets about how cryptocurrency will save us all. They never say from what. Our excuse for a plan for the future is the deus-ex-machina of AGI.

The ethic of enlightenment modernity has left us. And the era of postmodernity has come. Modernity gave us clear ideals. Postmodernity gives us “anything goes.”

In postmodernity - we think we are too smart to see things in black and white like that. We used to assume that the natives needed Jesus- now that idea makes us aghast! We used to want to reach the whole world, now there are tribes and people groups we intentionally leave alone.

What hope does the world put forth? What is the secular vision of man? That he doesn't die too early, doesn't die too young, has a roof over their head, and a meal in their stomach? If the world was all like that - would our global project be over? How low is the bar?

Even the religious vision of man leaves a lot to be wanted. The church for the past 100 years has obsessed with salvation, but has left sanctification behind. The lack of discipleship in the modern church has created a stagnant community. They don't think progress in the world is possible because they don't even see or think progress is possible in themselves.

Is this all there is? What is the Christian attitude to progress?

THE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE

But our hope is that Christians are neither modernists or postmodernists. We are followers of the Way. And we have a hope for this world and the people in the world. A reason to hope gives us a reason to act.

Where others see "no-hope", "too-far-gone", "irredeemable" or at least "unforgivable" - we hope, we run after, we redeem and forgive. Jesus, our model, left the 99 sheep to go after the one. God sees potential where no one else does.

"God.. who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." - Romans 4:17

We have a hope for this world and the people in this world. And that faith translates into action. We don't put on blinders. We don't pretend that things are greater than they are.

Jesus tells us plainly how to live:

"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil." - Luke 6:35

We don't ignore the pain of people we don't like. The Bible teaches us, almost from page 1, that the world is broken, and people are broken. We know it's full of pain and suffering. The world is full of slavery, forced and self-induced. And we should not believe the lie that it's going away. We know that "the poor will always be among you." Candidly, we know the world sucks.

We do not stop at turning people from sick to healed, from destitute to dignified, from starving to fed. We strive to unlock all the potential in the material: in people and in the world. From healed to athlete, from “just-not-poor” to generous abundance. We are not called back in time to the protological Eden, but forward to the eschatological New Jerusalem.

God does not just feel the pain of sin, he grieves the pain of missed opportunity and therefore so should we. Consider Jesus in the Parable of the talents in Matthew 25. Praise for the man who responded fully:

"His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’"

And condemnation for the man who squandered it.

"You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?'"

God asks, demands, we use our gifts for good as they are the reason they were given to us in the first place.

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked" - Luke 12:48

Man, at his best, has free will: the ability to choose. With this lens, aren't we in a global pandemic?

Take work: the global 0.1 percent has a lot of optionality here. They can be whatever they want to be: painters, teachers, baristas, and of course hedge fund managers. But what about everyone else? How many souls are stuck in dead end and uninspiring jobs? Is that pain worth measuring? Do we care? How many people had no choice in their careers? If you live in most places of the world, you do the family trade, even if you hate it.

I know this kind of pain is foreign to talk about. It's like health: we are very good at seeing what's broken "you're arm is broken" and prescribing a fix "wear this cast". Makes sense.

The Christian response is not just fixing that which is broken, but revealing that potential which is within every person and every thing.

We are much less good at is seeing potential. "Now that your arm is healed... Your current mile time is 8 minutes, but based on your physiology, you can get to 6".

Or in economic terms, we are very good at measuring profits and losses, but abysmal at measuring missed opportunity. An entire industry is dedicated to finding mis-priced assets (an optimistic take of the finance industry) - but actively managed funds rarely beat the market. Activist investors look for upside, missed opportunity, and take skin-in-the-game to improve them. Activist investors are villianized by culture for not succeeding often enough.

Said another way: "back to Eden" is not enough, nor our direction. Our goal is not just to restore things to a peaceful place as it was in the beginning, our goal is to see it through to its completion. It seems obvious to say, but you can never go back to the past. We start in a garden, but we end in a garden-city. We start in the space that God made, we end in the space we build together. Our goal is not just the restoration of all things, it is the revealing of all things.

I'm bad at this too. Pain in my face is really easy to see. The known unknown of "what could be" - extremely difficult. We must imagine more.

In a world full of the extremes: self-delusion of eutopia or nihilism about everything -- The Christian way presents a third path. Sober-minded optimism and hard work. And God does not leave us unequipped.

"Hope for the coming Kingdom knows that ultimate fulfillment is beyond human powers to effect. Yet, far from being condemned to inactivity, we are inspired to prepare this present for the future. Such preparation is the work of hope carried out by love. Conscious of the preliminary character of his achievements, the man of hope is open to more promising answers to the problems that claim his energy. Thus he is opened beyond himself to the future of God’s kingdom"- Wolfhart Pannenberg

Wolfhart Pannenberg was a German Lutheran Theologian (1928-2014). He has made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the resurrection of Christ (Wikipedia)

CO-CREATORS

I think our mission is simple: to make people more like they should be and make the world more like it should be. It is the call of Genesis 1 and the Great Commission of Matthew 28 put together. Each individual’s part to play may be unglamorous or ‘small’, but together the Church, as Christendom, can move the world.

And this is not just our mission, this is God's mission. It is the Gospel's mission: to bring all things and people in union with God, to His glory.

Working through humans is God's plan A. Through being filled with the spirit, we represent the union that is to come. We have one foot in the material and the other in the spiritual.

If you've spent much time in Christian circles, perhaps this sounds like repeating doctrine. That's because it is. But do we stop to consider how absolutely radical and crazy this is? We are the facilitators of the breaking in of heaven space into the here and now. Through our love and our actions we are doing God's work: the work of the Gospel. We are the tip of the spear of progress.

This task is God's task: and he suits us with the armor of faith. His fire and fuel fill all that we do. He goes before us and makes a way. He gives us deputized authority over demons. He gives us what we ask, because we ask in faith. In the same way that the woman's faith made her well, our faith makes the world well. It is incredible to me that God would invite humans to join in His mission, but he does whole-heartedly. In this way, we are appointed co-creators and anointed saints.

"For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building." - 1 Corinthians 3:9

"Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." - 2 Corinthians 6:1-2, quoted from Isaiah 49:8

We know that our actions are not a vapor that dissipates and is forgotten. Our actions resonate into eternity. Jesus remembers.

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.... The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” - Matthew 25:35-40

In the mission of bringing heaven and earth into harmony, our faith creates the thin spaces for God to work. We have been given vision to see our calling.

"having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints" - Ephesians 1:18

Are we waiting for our ticket out of here? Are we just waiting for security and success and the exit of pain? If we wait for the Rapture, we perpetuate the secular nihilistic lie. Paul rejects this directly:

"If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” - 1 Corinthians 15:32

Jesus tells the Parable of the Minas in Luke 19 for this exact reason. In reaction to "because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately." (verse 11), Jesus tells the story of the master who entrusts his servants with wealth and tasks them to ‘Engage in business until I come.’ Jesus, who is the master, then says "When he returned, having received the kingdom, he ordered these servants to whom he had given the money to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by doing business." You probably know the story, one servant doubles the minas that were entrusted to him, another by 50 percent. Yet the last servant, miming the opinion of the mob, "But his citizens hated him (the master)", wraps his minas in a hankerchief. Jesus has strong words for this servant, "I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me."

If we live as though we believe "that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately" we squander what God has entrusted us with.

Do good works matter? Let's consider Titus 2:11-15:

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you."

We are put here for a larger purpose. We must engage deeply, invest deeply, we must make a difference. For some that will mean changing what we do. For others that will mean viewing the things they are already doing in a higher way. Consider the story of the three bricklayers.

One day in 1671, Christopher Wren observed three bricklayers on a scaffold, one crouched, one half-standing and one standing tall, working very hard and fast. To the first bricklayer, Christopher Wren asked the question, “What are you doing?” to which the bricklayer replied, “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working hard laying bricks to feed my family.” The second bricklayer, responded, “I’m a builder. I’m building a wall.” But the third brick layer, the most productive of the three and the future leader of the group, when asked the question, “What are you doing?” replied with a gleam in his eye, “I’m a cathedral builder. I’m building a great cathedral to The Almighty.”

Our efforts will ripple into eternity,

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." - Philippians 1:6

"Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." - 1 Corinthians 15:58

Actions may not play a role in our salvation, but they most definitely play a key part in our sanctification and the world's.

From the beginning of Protestant Christianity in the Reformation, "sola-fideo", faith-alone was the battle cry. Reacting to a Catholic church that had created a superstition profit machine of literally selling tickets to heaven - Martin Luther threw off the rampant religious consumerism of "works based salvation", and preached that your salvation status has nothing to do with what you have done or what you will do. It only has to do with what you believe. He was right. That is what Jesus preached as well.

But I wonder if in throwing off actions, Protestants retreated fully into faith. Faith is the key to salvation, but the key to sanctification is so much more and actions play a key role. Protestants threw off actions, but now do they see the point beyond salvation? Protestants, or perhaps better named Soterians, ended up framing everything through the lens of faith-based salvation. The Christian life became all about salvation, salvation became all about professing faith, and so the Christian project became all about getting more people to profess faith.

Recently however, it feels a new reformation is growing out of a tiredness of "counting numbers at the altar call" instead wanting depth of a Christian experience in discipleship and sanctification and a calling in the world to make an impact through actions.

For the Christian, their salvation is about the past, but their sanctification is about the future. In that way - we have a unique openness to the future. We hold the future loosely, and in that way we also don’t hold the present tightly.

"Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’" - James  4:15

Our Christian ethic is born from the eschatological promise of what is to come, not out of protectionism for the way things were or are today. The Christian ethic is in that way inextricably interwoven with the future.

In co-creating with God, we act in the world, we move the world into the future, and make it a better shadow of the New Jerusalem.

"Through the Spirit, God is already working in history, using human actions to create provisional states of affairs that anticipate the new creation in a real way." - Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf is a Croatian Protestant theologian and public intellectual and Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale University. He previously taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in his native Osijek, Croatia and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California (Wikipedia)