Mic Drop?

Watch this, I'm going to have an argument with nobody in particular.
I see these things, these posts on the interweb.  Memes and little inspirational placards that talk about salvation and how you ought to get right with God, or believe the right thing or something like that.  The one I've seen a handful of places is quote attributed to a young man named LeCrae, who is a Christian hip-hop artist (yes, that is apparently a thing you can be).  It goes like this:

If I'm wrong about God, then I wasted my life.

If you're wrong about God, then you wasted your eternity.

Boom, mic drop, exit stage right, haters sit down, Jesus is in the hizz-ouse.

Wait, what?  If he's wrong about God he wasted his life?  How exactly? By loving your neighbor? By forgiving people? By worshiping? By being part of a community that supports you in your struggles and your journey?  Maybe I'm losing it, but I don't feel at all like my relationship with God, and trying to follow Jesus is wasting my life.  On the contrary, it's giving my life a fullness and meaning that it absolutely did not have when I was an angry agnostic young man..

Don't get me wrong, I can say the last words of the Nicene Creed: "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come," with conviction and assurance, but let's be honest, that should not be the focus of a life of faith.  I'm looking forward to the life of the world to come alright, but in the meantime I'm learning to love how faith in a Living God shapes my plain old Thursdays.

I'm wondering too, if maybe it's going to take a bit of a shift away from emphasizing eternity; heaven, hell, and the whole lot, in order for the good news to start running wild in the world once again.

Let's think about how this sort of "argument" sounds to an outsider, I mean if they don't immediately write it off as nonsense and write you off as a religious nut.  First of all the worldview it represents is that there is a way to be right about God (not be in a right relationship to God).  In this context, it means believing that God is real and that Jesus is the Son of God (or the second "person" of the Trinity).  Being "wrong" about God means basically disagreeing with the speaker on just about any aspect of faith and life.  Being wrong about God = Going to Hell, being utterly destroyed etc.

Deep breath.

I study theology.  In fact, I guess you could say I am a professional theologian.  I deal with Scripture and matters of faith all day, every day.  And the one thing I am absolutely sure about, in an irrevocable and humbling fashion, is that I am wrong about God.  I hope not entirely wrong, but I also will never claim to be completely right.  As a Christian, I believe that the closest I can get to knowing exactly what God is like is to look at what he showed us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven, but I know he was not talking about what we call heaven or eternity, a lot of the time. He was frequently talking about how we are supposed to treat each other as children of God, rather than some eternal reward.  However, there are enough times that he pretty clearly references resurrection and life everlasting, that I trust it.  What it's like, I don't know.  How it works? I don't know. I know and try to work at the part of it that is at hand, rather than what is coming.

Living with this faith and within this framework does not "waste my life," even if it's not true.  It gives me hope in hopeless situations and allows me to face challenges with dignity and it inspires me to love people in a way that I never would otherwise.

When the only power I had to answer to was my own self, I was not free. When the only guiding principle of my life was what felt good, I felt terrible.  When my highest principle was: "look out for number one," I was a miserable wretch.  When I started to build a relationship with God I was given life, real life, not the dim facsimile of life I had before.

It occurs to me with increasing frequency that we (meaning Christians) have put too many eggs in the eternity basket.  We use the word "saved" rather than "changed," which subtly peels the emphasis away from actually acting any different now.  It's mostly our loss, because we're missing the blessedness of the immanent kingdom of God.  But it's also a loss to the world, because we're not as busy being the blessedness of the immanent kingdom of God as we should be.

We're too busy telling people we're right and they're wrong.