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Reconciliation and Recapitulation

Christianity has over the centuries often been distracted by various things, different aspects of the supposed life with God, that we have repeatedly lost track of just what God is doing in the world—in the Creation. In the tradition I was raised in, we spent a lot of time arguing against “the denominations,” and “returning to the old paths.” The idea was that God wanted us to worship and conduct our assemblies just like the first-century church and we spent a lot of time ferreting out the divine rules for “church.” The result for many of us was a sort of catechesis of Bible passages on various topics, normally focused on those things that made us different and others wrong. One of our proclamations toward those who didn’t “do church” the way we did was that they were “worshiping in error.” This was such a convenient phrase that we could use it about denominations and even those of our own groups if they did something in their assemblies or even structured themselves differently as a church than we did. The implication of course was that those who dared to worship in error were on the high road straight to Hell. Our eschatology had two poles, Heaven and Hell and you didn’t want to end up in that second one. Our focus was pretty much limited to that—get people into the Sweet By and By because here we are nothing more than Straying Pilgrims.  We focused intentionally or not, on “church” as the concern of Scripture and therefore of God. Get church right and all will be well.

Other groups had and have similar views but the details were different. The central ideas though all seemed to align with the idea that the real purpose of God in the world was to get you to Heaven and in some cases, bless you beyond measure with cars, cash, and condos in this world. Just act right, have enough faith, and the storehouses of Heaven will pour down upon you. We know that to be true because the Bible says so. At least the passages that those who taught and teach this choose to focus on.

There are probably aspects of every group’s central focus which are true. We are told, aren’t we that God seeks to bless His people? There are some things that God wants his disciples to do when they are together, isn’t there? Well yes, to both of those. The challenge here though is to understand just how those desires of God fit within the overall work of God in the Creation.

Jesus says that those who believe in Him will live like he did; they will have views and behaviors that reflect His own views and behaviors. This is what ‘belief” actually means in Scripture. If we believe something, we act as though it is true, according to Dallas Willard. If we “believe in Jesus,” we will come to live like Jesus.

God’s work in Creation—the example of Jesus is reconciliation and recapitulation. The goal is to set the Creation right by reconciling first, God and Man, and then people to people with an end result that there will be eventually a new Heaven and a new Earth. A cleansed Creation as it were. Our call, our purpose is to be part of that work. Ours is not to hope to get to Heaven because “this world is not our home,” but to bring Heaven here; to live the kingdom of God on Earth. In doing that, our focus is on becoming ourselves and inviting and encouraging others to be the embodiment of Jesus, as His disciples. Our drive isn’t to do church correctly or gain wealth, but to use the blessings we have to bless others, to join with Jesus in relieving the hurting, feeding the hungry, releasing the oppressed. Our goal is to bring the kingdom of God, of love to the world. When we forget that, when we focus on how we can benefit from our faith and lose sight of bringing the kingdom here for the benefit of all, we become less than we are and in that, we betray our calling and purpose.

 

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