This World Is Our Home

ByAlex Franklin March 8, 2022 2 Comments

Photo Credit: Eberhard Grossgasteiger

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Let’s talk about going to heaven.

Generally speaking, the prevailing belief in Christianity is that when a faithful Christian dies, their soul leaves their body and goes to be with God in heaven for the rest of eternity. Furthermore, the belief is that the faithful that are alive at Jesus’ second coming will have their souls taken from their bodies and will be whisked off to heaven to live with God forever while the Earth and the rest of creation is thoroughly destroyed — end of story.

But there’s a problem with this version of our story. And the problem is that that’s not the story that the Bible’s telling. The picture of souls living in heaven for eternity after creation is destroyed is an idea that was, over time, cobbled together with the help of a handful of disconnected, misinterpreted passages in scripture (in addition to a healthy dose of Greek philosophy and worldview).

But if we’ll take the time to back up and take a broad view of the entirety of the Bible story, we’ll see this view of the future is simply not true.

I, like most Christians, was raised within the “go to heaven” paradigm. But as an adult I’ve made changes to the way I interact with the Bible. About two years ago I made the intentional decision to begin approaching the Bible without any bias to see it simply for what it was saying (this being opposed to reading it to reinforce what I already believe or reading it uncritically due to the assumption that the way I understand everything already is correct). And it was only when I approached the Bible this way that I began to discover that it was not, in fact, pointing to humans earning their way from this physical world to live forever in a spiritual one.

And this discovery was jarring for me because “going to heaven” had been so fundamental to my Christian worldview to that point in my life. And I’d be willing to bet that if you’re a Christian reading this, it’s been a fundamental belief for you, as well.

“So,” you may be asking yourself, “if God’s plan isn’t to destroy all of creation and have the faithful live with Him in heaven forever, then what is His plan? If we’re not trying to ‘go to heaven,’ then what should we be working toward?”

The answer, can be summed up with these words:

  • Restoration
  • Renewal
  • Resurrection

The restoration, renewal, and resurrection of God’s good creation — not our escape from it — is what the Bible story is about.

Now, before we continue, I want to make something clear: this post won’t exhaustively cover the topics of restoration/renewal/resurrection. The reason being, that the restoration view of the story of scripture is not the product of a verse or two taken out of context. If that were the case, then this post alone could probably do the job. On the contrary, the themes of restoration and renewal are woven throughout all of scripture — from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 (and when you realize this and start looking for them in the story, you’ll start seeing them everywhere, and you’ll wonder how you never saw them before). Because of that, it would be impossible to cover it all in this post alone.

So, if you finish this post and are still unsure, if you have more questions, or if you’d like more to chew on — just know that more will be following this writing. Similarly, if you finish this post and think that I’ve avoided passages like Philippians 3:20, 2 Peter 3:10, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 just know that I haven’t avoided them. I will address those and others as follow-ups soon after this writing. Please understand that the purpose of this post is to simply build a foundation for the restoration concept in your mind (and doing that alone will make this post long enough). Once the restoration foundation is laid, we will go on to explore it from many different angles and passages in scripture in the effort to correct some of our traditional misconceptions.

Understanding the concepts of restoration, renewal, and resurrection are foundational to accurately seeing and understanding God’s kingdom. And it is because Christians today so desperately need to be re-taught the Bible message in relation to these themes that my plan moving forward is to dedicate a significant portion of this blog to exploring them both in scripture as well as in the world around us. Having an accurate understanding of God’s plan to restore creation (as opposed to having humans escape from it) is of critical importance. To understand it properly changes everything, I promise.

Anyway, enough talking, let’s dive in!

God’s Good Creation

In the beginning, God creates.

He creates Sun, Moon, stars, earth and sky — and they are good. Then He creates plants and animals — filling the earth with life. And when He’s done, he declares all that He’s made “good.”

And let’s be clear about something: the “good” we’re talking about here isn’t the same “good” you use when listing your old food processor on Craigslist — “good” being a quality score somewhere between Excellent and Fair. No, God did not create a “decent” world.

The world God made was GOOD, as in, not bad in any way — devoid of fault. Pure. Perfect.

And why was what He created so good? Because it was (and still is) an expression of Himself!

All of creation (Earth and the universe) testifies of its creator and His goodness (Romans 1:20). Creation puts God’s nature and personality on full display for all to both see and experience. Day and night, without ceasing, creation tells of God’s:

  • Limitlessness (look at the utterly incomprehensible expansiveness of the universe)
  • Creativity (observe the stunning variety of plants and animals on earth, as well as the innumerable array of unique planets and stars across the universe)
  • Power (think volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, grizzly bears, silverback gorillas…)
  • Artistry (think ocean sunrises, mountain sunsets, rainbows, rolling lavender fields…)
  • Ingenuity (think planets rotating around stars in outer space, human anatomy and physiology, the intricacy of our planet’s ecosystem…)
  • Wild, untamed, undomesticated-ness (think the wind, the ocean…or life on the African plains, in the Amazon jungle, or in the rugged Himalayas…)

All of creation is an expression of God — and God is good. So, that makes creation good.

Think about this: God’s creativity, ingenuity, and power are literally limitless…He could have made anything. And what He made was essentially what we see today (minus the pollution, landfills, deforestation, and so on). Have you ever realized that what you wake up to every day, what you drive through on your commute, what you gaze up into at night, and what you dig your hands into whenever you garden is the product of the immense creativity and power of a limitless God? Because it is.

Over time we can become jaded and a little too familiar with this place. And that causes us to not properly marvel at the wonders we experience every day. But this place is incredible!

God took the utmost care and consideration with the world He made, because He cares about it. And He cares about all of it because it’s a part of Him…creation is His testimony!

And that makes it valuable beyond measure.

Only The Best

After God creates the world and populates it with plants and animals, He crowns it by adding one final piece of Himself. The final stroke in His masterpiece — the signature to top it all off — is an image of Himself.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 1: 26-27 (NIV)

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So, here’s the task that God gave himself: Take the immeasurably wild, powerful, beautiful, eternal, invisible creator of all things and give Him physical features.

That’s quite the building project, wouldn’t you say?

Now, if a master craftsman is given a project of great value and importance, do you imagine he or she would choose the best materials they can get their hands on to complete the project? Absolutely they would. And God, being the Master Craftsman and Creator, is no different.

So, what material did He choose to carry out such an important building project?

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Genesis 2: 7 (NIV)

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What we see here (if we’re really looking) is that God, when taking on the highest project in the universe — making an image of Himself — did, in fact, use the best materials for the job…He used the earth!

Would He have done that if He viewed the earth as anything less than perfect? Of course He wouldn’t!

Only the best from God, and only the best for God.

Made For This Place

But that’s not all. There’s something else that God is communicating by choosing to form us from the dust of the ground…

In addition to declaring the value of the earth He created, He’s also affirming our connection to it.

By making humans from the raw material of the earth God is declaring to His image-bearers:

This world is your space.

Nothing God does is random or arbitrary, everything has a meaning (even if we don’t understand it).

Have you ever considered the fact that God could have introduced us to the world any number of ways, but He chose to make us from the earth itself?

Think about it, He could have just as easily made us somewhere else (like the heavenly realm) and dropped us into this place — He could have just as easily beamed us down to the planet like crewmembers of the Starship Enterprise, or something. So, why didn’t He?

— — — — — — — — — — — —
extra- (prefix): outside, beyond
terrestrial (adj.): of, on, or relating to the earth
— — — — — — — — — — — —

The answer: Because God didn’t want extra-terrestrials ruling His good world! He knew that using “outsiders” wouldn’t reinforce the ownership role that He had in mind for us in the world (Gen. 1:26). If he dropped us out of the sky, then we wouldn’t ever truly be at home here — instead we’d be foreigners. But, in His love and wisdom God took every care to make sure that we were at home on earth.

Hear me when I say this: We are not, and never have been, aliens in this world — God made us earthlings through and through.

More evidence of this is given by how dependent God made us on His creation for our existence (again, remember that He is not arbitrary).

God designed humans (His image-bearers) in such a way that we need:

  • the air that’s within the atmosphere, or we’d suffocate
  • the water that’s on and in the earth, or we’d die of dehydration
  • the food that comes from the plants of the earth, or we’d starve
  • the medicinal aids derived from plants and other materials to aid in healing and recovery
  • the gravitational pull of the earth to keep us perfectly grounded
  • the light of the sun to see the world around us and keep us warm, and the list goes on…

And those are just a few of the tangible ways creation provides for humanity, that doesn’t even speak of the intangible ways that it sustains us — providing things we need like beauty, adventure, wonder, relaxation, discovery, inspiration, refreshment, and humor.

Make no mistake about it, we are not simply in this place pilgriming our way through it…No, we are a part of this place, and it’s a part of us. We are both inextricably linked.

God’s good world constantly supports us and makes us better, and God’s intent was for us to do the same for the world. And God didn’t want us to be ignorant of this, so He made sure to tells us this on page 1 of the story:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 1: 28 (NIV)

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The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Genesis 2: 15 (NIV)

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God created us to experience goodness. Because we’re made this way, we can feel something deep in our innermost being that tells us the world is currently not as it should be — Things are very wrong in this place. And this deep groaning is correct, things are very wrong here. But, the issue is that we’ve been told time and again that the solution is to escape the world.

Here, I’ll say again: We are not, and never have been, aliens here.

But do you know what is alien here?

Pain. Struggle. Scarcity. Disease. Death.

Brothers and sisters, it’s these things that are the foreigners that God wants to remove from the world, not us! The discomfort that we experience here isn’t creation’s fault. Our discomfort here is the result of these foreign things that were introduced later, things that weren’t ever supposed to be a part of our experience on earth! They’re the sharp pebbles in an otherwise perfect shoe. The solution is to remove the pebbles, not destroy the shoe.

The true yearning of our heart is not escape — it’s restoration!

God’s Good World Restored

At some point Christians adopted a false and dangerous belief: That the world (meaning: physical creation) is wicked, corrupt, and sinful.

This statement has our enemy’s fingerprints all over it. Being the father of lies (John 8:44) he can make some truly wrong things sound reasonable (see: Genesis 3). And he can do this because he knows the most convincing lies have elements of truth to them — that’s what makes them so misleading.

In this case, here are the two statements:

The truth: God’s good world has sin, wickedness, and corruption in it
The lie: The world is sinful, wicked, and corrupt

The difference between those two statements is subtle, but incredibly significant in their implications.

One statement says creation is inherently corrupt, while the other says the inherently good creation has been corrupted with the introduction of sin.

Have you ever seen a raw gold nugget? Raw gold, when mined from the earth is naturally intermingled with other minerals and things that aren’t nearly as valuable — things we call impurities.

Now, imagine while working in your yard you unearthed a raw gold nugget the size of a basketball. Would you consider it worthless? Would you throw it away because it wasn’t pure? Yeah, right! The opposite, you’d probably whoop and holler and thank your lucky stars, because you just struck it rich!

The hunk of gold you found, impurities and all, is incredibly valuable, it just needs refining. It needs to be put through a purification process in order to draw the undesirable elements out of it, leaving behind only the valuable gold.

The world, as God created it, was like the purest gold. When humanity rebelled against God (along with a host of rebellious spiritual beings) a whole slew of impurities were introduced into His world. But just like we still value gold that has impurities because we know impurities can be removed, God, too, still values His golden world and He is intent on removing every impurity to return it to its pure state.

You see, the devil hates God and anything that bears His image or expresses His goodness. This necessarily means that he hates creation, because it’s an expression of God’s goodness. This being the case, our enemy desperately wants us to believe that God’s creation is less than good. If he can get us to buy into this lie, then we’ll unwittingly impute the less-than-good nature of the creation onto its Creator.

Similarly, another trap we can fall into if we’re not careful is the belief that creation was good at first but has since been so damaged that God considers it beyond saving. But if this were true it would mean either:

  1. God created a world that wasn’t valuable enough to fight for (meaning He doesn’t care to save it), or
  2. Creation is so damaged that it’s beyond His ability to save it

This would mean that God is either ambivalent or weak (or both). None of which would reflect well on Him.

But thankfully, none of those is the case.

Because the Bible shows us that God both created something He deems worthy of fighting for and that He is more than able to save it (see: Jesus, resurrection).

Not Giving Up on His World

Here’s the Bible story summarized at a very high level:

  • God creates a perfect world and partners with us in ruling over it
  • We reject God and abdicate our God-given authority in the world
  • But God does not give up on His world or His people
  • We continue to rebel against God, rejecting our God-given mission of ruling with Him, causing harm to His world as we continue to do so
  • But God does not give up on His world or His people
  • Through prophets, God foretells of a future savior that will bring healing, justice, and reconciliation for the world
  • We continue to rebel against God, rejecting His prophets
  • But God does not give up on His world or His people
  • Jesus arrives and introduces himself to the world as the healing/restorative/reconciliatory savior that was prophesied
  • We continue to rebel against God, killing the son that He sent to heal us
  • But God does not give up on His world or His people
  • The church community is born and moves through the world as the continuation of Jesus’ world-healing mission
  • God does not give up on His world or His people
  • Jesus returns as triumphant king, destroys all remaining rebellious forces, heals all wrongs and fixes all brokenness in the world, bringing the entire world and everything in it back under the loving rule of God
  • Everything is finally back as it should be — as it was in the beginning.

What do we see as a recurring theme in the story?

God does not give up on His world or His people.

God has had every opportunity to scrap everything and start over from scratch. At any moment he could have blown everything away, killing all the life that He’d created, and start over. But He’s never done that. He flooded the world to cleanse the wickedness that was in it, but He didn’t destroy His creation.

God hasn’t given up on His creation to this point in the story, and I can’t think of a good reason why He would want to now (or later).

In Closing

The story of the Bible is in no way one of people scratching and clawing to escape a doomed ship.

The story of the Bible opens with a brief moment of awe-inspiring perfection, then takes a LONG detour in the form of humanity’s tragic, ongoing rebelling against a good God. One of the major tragedies of the story is that so much harm has been done to God’s good creation — humans, the planet, plants and animals, alike. But, even so, throughout this entire tragic portion of the story, God is constantly pointing to redemption — a return to the awe-inspiring perfection of the beginning.

You see, God wants His good world back — and not just the human souls — He wants it all back (Psalm 24:1). And the Bible tells us He will have it back. He will stop at nothing. He’s so committed to it, in fact, that He even gave His only son for it. Because His creation is that valuable to Him!

And in the end, the tragedy of the story is traded for triumph.

We can be sure that all wrongs will be made right — God will have His valuable world back.

Now, back to the questions asked at the beginning of this post:

“So, if God’s plan isn’t to destroy all of creation and have the faithful live with Him in heaven forever, then what is His plan? If we’re not trying to ‘go to heaven,’ then what should we be working toward?”

The answer: We are supposed to be a people working toward restoration! We work in this world (by the power of the Spirit) to reverse the damage of thousands of years of sin and separation from God. Because of our rebellion, we were disconnected from life, and Jesus brought us full access to Him once again. So, we work now to offer that Life-connection to as many people as we possibly can, thus inviting them back into their God-given role as rulers and keepers of the earth.

And though we may suffer now and fall victim to death, our death will not be permanent. After a period of temporary (and unnatural) separation from our bodies and our home, we will be reunited with both — the exact same way our king was reunited with his body and will be reunited with his world! The Bible tells us that in the end, our new life will not be some vague existence floating “in the clouds” as disembodied spirits for all eternity. No, the Bible speaks of renewed life in renewed bodies in a renewed world.

In the end, when all of the foreign elements (pain, struggle, scarcity, disease, death, etc.) have been removed from this world, we will, forevermore only be left with everything good. Once again, we will only eat good food, drink good drink, sing good songs, and dance good dances; living in the fullness of God’s presence, we will again walk and work with God.

In the end, God’s good world will truly be good again.

Our home will truly feel like home again.

And I, for one, cannot wait.

Your fellow earthling,
Alex

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As promised, below are a few articles examining some of the more common passages used to support the common “go to heaven” view of the afterlife:

A Second Look: Your citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20)

A Second Look: The earth is reserved for fire (2 Peter 3)

A Second Look: Meeting the Lord in the air (2 Thessalonians 4)