What’s the Matter with Matter?

Answer: nothing is the matter with matter.

If you asked me to list the most important concepts I learned in seminary, one of them would be the idea that the destination of God’s people is not to hover eternally in space in some disembodied state.  Rather, God will restore his people to a New (or a renewed) Earth: God’s Creation liberated from its bondage to decay.

Growing up, I thought eternity would be in Heaven (not the New Earth).  Heaven, I feared, would be like one of my great aunt’s homes where everything was really nice but we were forced to sit quietly while the big people talked.  Worse (and I’m talking about my sentiment as a child), I feared that it would be like church: boring

First of all, I’ve matured a bit in my desire to be with God’s people (and my views about church).  But, part of how I matured was to learn that we aren’t going to eternally flit about the clouds in white robes.  Ladd said (paraphrased), “The Bible always envisions an earthly destination for God’s people.”

If you haven’t thought much about how we’re earthlings, made for earth, and that we will spend eternity on a New Earth, you really need to read Mike Wittmer’s book, Heaven is a Place on Earth. 

Internet Monk recently interviewed Dr. Mike Wittmer, but click over and read the entire interview.

Many evangelicals think too little of God’s physical creation. They wrongly suppose that matter doesn’t matter or worse, that matter is the matter. This leads them to suppose that their spiritual soul is good and their physical body is bad and that a spiritual heaven is good and this physical earth is bad. So salvation becomes escapism. The goal of life is to slough off this body and troubled planet and go to heaven, where their divine-like souls can twinkle and shine forever. Of course, this is precisely what the Gnostics believed, but as I show in Heaven Is a Place on Earth, there is not one verse of Scripture which supports this view. Instead, the biblical hope, as N.T. Wright explains so well in Surprised by Hope, is the restoration of this creation.

Read it all here.