There are a few obsessions I have -- apart from John Piper, of course. One is resurrection. I am in love with new life and resurrection language and imagery, but this is a topic for another day. I am also obsessed with this idea of reconciliation and its dark cause and wonderful fulfillment in both future hope and present relational experience of the God of the universe, but this can wait too.
The garden. My obsession with the garden finds its root in the fact that I was made for it. The Pentateuch opens with anticipation, expectation, pregnant mystery giving birth to the land conceived in eternity past. "In the beginning" to the modern reader sounds so antiquated, but at the beginning these words could only look ahead to a living, breathing land that was full of perfect and glorious means and ends. Yes, means AND ends.
God knew them both. The wonder and mystery of the end. The tragedy and triumph of the means. Life is precious, but life out of death is thrilling, an unexpected plot twist in the ever darkening cosmic story; he who finds life past the brink of death finds its true meaning.
This garden life envelopes time and space. In the beginning, the garden tells us of what should have been the true man as he walked side by side with his Creator. At the end, the garden awaits once more, the hope of restoration and everlasting fulfillment. Between these bookends, as men endure the hell of turning away from God and condemn themselves to a true, literal hell, the anti-garden, one emerges living the life that every one of us secretly wants and knows we should have lived. This one true man comes with a message: Trust me, lay your heavy burdens and your dead life on me that I may free you to walk in all the fullness of mine.
Showing posts with label heaven. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heaven. Show all posts
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
From Paul's Journal: Sex and Heaven
My most recent exploration into heaven began several weeks ago when I stumbled over Isaiah 25. I'll come back to this momentarily, but first some thoughts from Mark Driscoll and C.S. Lewis.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis compares the next stage of man with the contemporary view of evolution. The turn from "huge, very heavily armoured creatures" to "little, naked, unarmoured animals which had better brains" is, by and large, inconceivable and leaves man with very little to go by in predicting the next stage.
The new man will be like nothing we've yet seen and Lewis makes the point that he is not the result of a sexual act. The new man is advanced and comes about through a spiritual birth. In the next stage, sex is voided, no longer necessary or even in existence. In a sermon I recently heard, Driscoll quotes Steve Arturburn as saying the sexual act is the most powerful, pleasurable act in man's earthly experience.
As a single man who still remains a virgin, I have no real category in which to place this information. I have never experienced the supposed thrill, ecstasy, and intimacy of what I am told is one of God's greatest gifts to man. You could say that my "Man" experience is still lacking, incomplete, as a puzzle missing a large piece just off-center or a machine not yet running at full efficiency because a certain cog has not yet been replaced with its proper upgrade.
So I ask, if for some reason I am not married and have not experienced sex before this life ends, will my joy be incomplete? It seems that if the words of Jesus are correct -- "they will not be married or given in marriage [in heaven]" -- there is no sex in heaven. But the greater question is, can my joy be incomplete in heaven? Is not every good and pleasurable thing on earth given, or come down rather, from the "Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow?"
The gift is not to be gloried in, but the Giver. Sex is not to be gloried in, but He who has given it. Will heaven not be the true form, and God the actual light that our individual idols cause to be seen as shadow on the earth, in which all joy and pleasure and more are culminated and even increased exponentially? In heaven, all good and pleasing gifts are true, real, tangible. It's amazing how empty men can feel at the height of conquest, success, and victory. How, when I grab onto what I'm looking for on this earth, it never seems to be what my soul is really in need of. That somehow in heaven the momentary, scattered wafts of true joy and pleasure that often tempt me to God are full and ongoing and not lacking for eternity.
Heaven is to truly come home as we always dreamed it would look, to smiles and hugs and never-ending love deep as the sea. Heaven is to walk the fields along the creek side soaking in every bit of the sun's warmth to never again have a care or a worry or a fear of something needing to be done or fixed or made ready. Heaven is to know my neighbor with the greatest of love and intimacy surpassing and superseding what man knew as sex on the earth in ages past, now nearly a forgotten memory.
Isaiah informs of us these things:
In Mere Christianity, Lewis compares the next stage of man with the contemporary view of evolution. The turn from "huge, very heavily armoured creatures" to "little, naked, unarmoured animals which had better brains" is, by and large, inconceivable and leaves man with very little to go by in predicting the next stage.
The new man will be like nothing we've yet seen and Lewis makes the point that he is not the result of a sexual act. The new man is advanced and comes about through a spiritual birth. In the next stage, sex is voided, no longer necessary or even in existence. In a sermon I recently heard, Driscoll quotes Steve Arturburn as saying the sexual act is the most powerful, pleasurable act in man's earthly experience.
As a single man who still remains a virgin, I have no real category in which to place this information. I have never experienced the supposed thrill, ecstasy, and intimacy of what I am told is one of God's greatest gifts to man. You could say that my "Man" experience is still lacking, incomplete, as a puzzle missing a large piece just off-center or a machine not yet running at full efficiency because a certain cog has not yet been replaced with its proper upgrade.
So I ask, if for some reason I am not married and have not experienced sex before this life ends, will my joy be incomplete? It seems that if the words of Jesus are correct -- "they will not be married or given in marriage [in heaven]" -- there is no sex in heaven. But the greater question is, can my joy be incomplete in heaven? Is not every good and pleasurable thing on earth given, or come down rather, from the "Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow?"
The gift is not to be gloried in, but the Giver. Sex is not to be gloried in, but He who has given it. Will heaven not be the true form, and God the actual light that our individual idols cause to be seen as shadow on the earth, in which all joy and pleasure and more are culminated and even increased exponentially? In heaven, all good and pleasing gifts are true, real, tangible. It's amazing how empty men can feel at the height of conquest, success, and victory. How, when I grab onto what I'm looking for on this earth, it never seems to be what my soul is really in need of. That somehow in heaven the momentary, scattered wafts of true joy and pleasure that often tempt me to God are full and ongoing and not lacking for eternity.
Heaven is to truly come home as we always dreamed it would look, to smiles and hugs and never-ending love deep as the sea. Heaven is to walk the fields along the creek side soaking in every bit of the sun's warmth to never again have a care or a worry or a fear of something needing to be done or fixed or made ready. Heaven is to know my neighbor with the greatest of love and intimacy surpassing and superseding what man knew as sex on the earth in ages past, now nearly a forgotten memory.
Isaiah informs of us these things:
"The LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, And refined, aged wine.
And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, Even the veil which is stretched over all nations.
He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces,
And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;
For the LORD has spoken."Isaiah 25:6-8
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