I have been reading this morning a quote from J.I.Packer, where Packer is urging Christians to take more seriously the heavenly hope, the newer and greater Narnia. He says, 'We have recast Christianity into a mold that stresses happiness above holiness, blessings here above blessings hereafter, health and wealth as God's best gifts. and death especially early death, not as thankworthy deliverance from the miseries of a sinful world, but as the supreme disaster...is our Christianity out of shape?Yes it is, and the basic reason is that we have lost the New Testament's two world perspective that views the next life as more important that this one and understands life here as essentially preparation and training for the life hereafter.' as cited by Gordon Bridger in his BST on Obadiah.
I found this quite a wake up call as I didn't realise that I felt this way but recently I have seen a Christian friend die fairly young and have only seen it as a disaster, of course it is a disaster for his family who are left behind and I know that he is with God, delighting in Him but I realised this morning that I have a very earthy grasp of the things of this world and this time perspective. Seeing the horrors of life on earth perhaps through the lens of something like humanism/deism. In my mind I have never brought into the 'too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good idea', in fact I agree with C.S.Lewis that those Christians who have impacted the world the most are the ones who are very heavenly minded. Take for instance the Puritans and their successors into the C18th who had as Packer again says, lived one step away from eternity which is why they were such giants of the earth. I intend to change to see beyond the veil and get a more heavenly perspective.
Let us as Christians pursue with vigour the coming kingdom and live for Christ in this world as we wait our heavenly hope.
Shalom
Stephen
No comments:
Post a Comment