I blame Andy Crouch for forever ruining my ability to not cringe when Christians refer to what will happen when they "go to heaven."
It was while reading his discussion in Culture Making of the end of the narrative in Revelation that it first really struck me that the end of the story takes place on the renewed earth, complete with a renewed city, renewed trees, gates leading out into the big wide world and letting the nations--still identified as nations--enter. It is to this renewed earth, John describes, that heaven comes down. At the end of the story, then, we don't go up to spend eternity with God in heaven; He comes down to spend eternity with us on earth.
I also blame Andy Crouch for the number of times I've kicked myself that I didn't see this sooner. After all, that's the story of the entire Bible! In Genesis 2 & 3, God comes down to visit Adam & Eve--they don't have to leave the earth behind. In John 1, Jesus comes and "pitches His tent with us" (literal wording for "dwelt among us").
So, why, I've wondered for the last couple years, do we sing so much about what will happen "when we all get to heaven," and how "this world has nothing for me," or even, "this world is not my home?" Granted: The second is likely referring to the world as the system of sin that governs human culture (at least, that's how I sing it--but even then, Crouch argues, we still need culture), but when I hear statements like the third, I can't help but conclude that the writer somehow thinks that this big 6000-km-radius ball of mostly molten iron with a surface gravitational acceleration of 32 ft/s^2 and atmosphere of primarily nitrogen is the wrong place for us. "This is my Father's world"--I want to shout--"and it's also mine!"
This earth is our home--and it will be, for all eternity. That's what makes it so amazing that God would move heaven here to be with us.
Granted, if you see me in church, I'll still sing most of the lines about "heaven," but only because "new earth" just doesn't fit rhythmically. :-P
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That's a great point. I didn't pick it up from Crouch though. It must have been from something else, but really it makes sense in the context of the whole point of Christianity: Christ came to redeem us, not just take us away from the place where all the bad stuff happens. It isn't a stretch at all to assert, then, that He will redeem all of creation as well, is it?
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