Rethinking Lifestyle

Climate Change and environmental concerns are (finally) becoming normal, everyday issues in Canadian society, inspiring political platforms and personal lifestyle changes. One area of our lives that these issues rarely touch is Sunday morning: for a number of reasons the church has a complicated history with the earth, and some of the biggest opposition to environmental stewardship has come from Christians in North America.

Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is the most difficult to read. It’s also one of the books that most shapes our understanding of life: it provides a vision of the future, and like a novel, we understand the chapters of our lives differently if we’ve already read the ending. Our eschatology, or understanding of  “last things,” impacts the way we view life’s journey because it tells us where we’re going.

In the Old Testament, heaven or salvation is understood to be an earthly reality in which the world is at peace, we all have enough (we can sit in the shade of our own fig tree), and all people come to Jerusalem to worship God. Ezekiel describes God’s heavenly temple coming down to earth, and Revelation continues this vision, describing it as the entire city of a new Jerusalem, in both cases symbolizing God living among us here on earth. But the temple itself, from the original description in the Old Testament right through to the New Jerusalem in Revelation, is designed to evoke the Garden of Eden. That is, the place where God lives is still the Garden of Eden, and living with God means a return to the Garden. Heaven, then, is an earth in which we all live in harmony with God and each other in a new or restored Garden of Eden.

Some eschatological texts suggest that the earth will be destroyed. We have traditionally emphasized this as an act of God against the earth in judgement for sin, and this emphasis has led to us treating the earth like a throw-away world that God will discard and replace. It is certainly possible to read some texts this way, but the overarching theme in the Bible is the restoration of all things, not their complete destruction. All eschatological passages show the world in partial destruction – but so does the news today. If we recall from last week that our primary role is to steward the created world, we should be inspired to care for the earth rather than contribute to its destruction, participating with God in the work of restoring all things to harmony and health.

The end of the world is just like the beginning, living with God in a peaceful garden. Knowing where we’re from, and where we’re going, gives us our bearings to see how to get there. Let’s follow God’s lead back to the Garden, by helping the world bloom.