The Challenge of Easter 2

This is the second of three posts I wanted to make about N.T. Wright's book, The Challenge of Easter. In this post we'll think about what our response should be in light of God's creative work at Christ's resurrection. Specifically, I'll examine Wright's discussion about environmental and humanitarian concerns and provide a few reflections about why the way we treat God's creation matters. The reflections here will point forward to the final post on this book, which will be about mission in a postmodern context.

[This post should be read with my earlier post about Christian environmentalism in mind.]

Wright roots his discussion about the care of the earth in the resurrection and in the notion of new creation. Wright begins:

"Blessed, says Jesus, are those who have not seen yet believe; yes, indeed, but one day we shall see him as he is and share the completed new creation that he is even now in the process of planning and making. We live, therefore, between Easter and the consummation, following Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and commissioned to be for the world what he was for Israel, bringing God's redemptive reshaping to our world" (38).

However, Wright correctly notes that we Christians have had a difficult time understanding just what that means; he identifies two different ways of thinking about the world. Eschatology plays a part here because the two approaches hinge on what a person thinks is going to happen "in the end."

The first approach for thinking about creation is labeled by Wright as "dualism." By this, Wright refers to the impulse that so many Christians have to simply say that the world is going to burn so why should we care what happens to it? As Wright describes this notion, "Armageddon is coming, so who cares about acid raid or third-world debt?" (38). Wright again points to John's emphasis on Easter Sunday as the first day of new creation, and thus, Wright reminds his readers that such a dualistic understanding of creation is "a radically anti-creation viewpoint" (38). Anti-creationism cannot be a Christian's understanding of the world because the story of God's work as told in Scripture is that God created a good creation and that he is at work to redeem all of his creation back to himself. Wright properly says that such a dualistic understanding of the world is a "distortion" of Scripture (38).

The second approach for thinking about creation, according to Wright, is a millennial notion which says that humanity can do enough to "build the kingdom of God by our own hard work" (39). Wright immediately asserts that such a notion is "sorely mistaken." According to Wright, when God acts to bring his kingdom in its fullness, it "will be an act of fresh grace, of radical newness"--not an act of human work. Therefore, God's kingdom will have both "continuity" with this world as well as "surprise" upon seeing that which we cannot imagine (39). Wright concludes by saying that the notion of bringing the kingdom by our own work is as misguided as the dualism that expects the world to burn.

As an alternative to these options, Wright offers a third way. He writes, "You are following Jesus and shaping our world in the power of the Spirit. And when the final consummation comes, the work that you have done--whether in Bible study or biochemistry, whether in preaching or in pure mathematics, whether in digging ditches or in composing symphonies--will stand, will last" (40). Therefore what we do matters. It matters because we are already living in the midst of the new, even though it has not come in its fullness. The resurrection of Jesus provides a hopeful glimpse into the future that God has "prepared for all the world to see." If, as Wright and other authors have argued, the church is to live as though the new is already fully a reality, then through the church's proleptic witness, the world should see in the church the world that God intends for all of creation to experience. Sadly though, the church has often failed to provide such an alternative witness to the world.

It troubles me deeply when I hear Christians say things like "God wants humans to exploit the earth in order to get ahead." I fear that this sort of impulse not only fails to bear witness to the reality of new creation but also spits in the face of our Creator who is still at work today. If God is at work today, then Christians must care about how humans are treating the earth. Much more, Christians must care about how widows, aliens, and orphans, the poor and the imprisoned are treated. I worry that too often our market-driven economy tells everyone, Christians included, that such marginalized people in this world don't matter because they have gotten themselves into their current situation. But anyone with any sense about them should realize that the marginalized are precisely who Jesus cared for during his ministry. Christians, then, must also care about the marginalized. When we choose to be self-serving by polluting and deforesting, ignoring and oppressing, we work against the Creative Spirit of God. We must work with God as we move toward the fullness of new creation!

We also fail to witness the good news of the Kingdom of God when we fail to partner with God in the work of new creation. In my next post, I will consider how we should think about missions today in light of our discussions of Easter and new creation.