Ideas That Have Ruined Me - Follow-Up on "Going to Heaven"

I mentioned last week that I've been ruined by the idea that Christians spend eternity on the new earth, and that God comes to us (rather than us leaving a doomed world behind to float in the clouds). A related idea that has also ruined me (though not in my original list) is the thought that I honestly don't know what an unfallen world would look like.
We often make comments that suggest we do know what the restored creation will look like:


"I can't wait 'til heaven, when I'll be talented enough to sing," I read a friend's post on facebook once.


"I can't wait 'til God tells me everything I've ever wanted to know and I can understand it instantaneously," I've often said.


And my personal favorite was R. C. Sproul's off-handed comment in a video I once saw: "Entropy is a great little result of the Fall."

It amazes me that we are so self-derogatory that we think that what we perceive to be insufficient talent is a consequence of our sinfulness, or that having to learn is a mark of imperfection. If even God is described as "learning" in the Bible (yes, I'm aware of the danger of taking such verses out of context, and that's not what I'm doing here--hence the quotation marks), why should our process of learning be a source of shame?

[And I'm still trying to understand how the integral of (1/T) with respect to Q (because that's what entropy is) could be a result of sin... I suspect Dr. Sproul was simply reaching for an illustration.]

What aspects of human life (or the universe in general) do you often attribute to the Fall? Is it necessarily so?

Ideas That Have Ruined Me: "Going to Heaven"

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