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“Visions of the Future”

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There’s an old story the ancient Greeks told about two men. The first would walk out his
front door in the morning and breakout with laughter. The world was such a funny place
that he just couldn’t help it. The other man walked out in the morning and burst into tears.
The world was so full of tragedy that he just couldn’t help it.

Which one do you think was right?

Well, in a sense, both were right.

Comedy and tragedy, laughter and tears. Both are reactions that tell us something is out of
order, that something is not what we expected to happen, or that something is not what we
wanted to happen.

Comedy, however, doesn’t bother us nearly so much as tragedy does. And yet on any given
day, in all sorts of ways, we’re surrounded by tragedy. If we are not feeling its weight
directly, we can be certain that someone around us surely is.

Creation, as we know it, is out of order, and we experience the effects all-too-often:
divorce, depression, disability, disease, drought, and death. These are the plagues of our
time, and sometimes the only proper response is to cry out with the Psalms, “How long O
God?”

We, as human beings, long for love, justice, wonder, and wholeness. But those things so
often slip right through our fingers. We think we’ve grasped them, and then we realize they
eluded us once more.

Isn’t it odd that the same atmosphere that produces sunsets and ocean breezes can also
produce hurricanes and tsunamis?
And isn’t it odd that the same fire we can use to cook food and produce heat can also burn
down our houses?
And again, isn’t it odd that relationships can bring us the greatest joys in life and they can
also cause us the most pain?

The same world produces both comedy and tragedy, both laughter and tears.

These are some of the tensions we’re all living with, and with this tension it’s logical to ask:

Is creation good or is creation bad?

How you answer that question, literally makes all the difference in the world. If you answer
that creation is surely good, then your vision of the future will be very different from the
vision of someone who answers that creation is surely not good.

So I put the question to you: Is creation good or is creation bad?

Based on their answer to this simple question, people have come up with three different
visions of what the future will look like:

The first vision is what we’ll call PESSIMISM.

Those who hold this vision answer the question by saying, “The world is not a good place,
and therefore our goal is to escape from it.”
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Historically, three different groups have held to this view in harder or softer forms:

The first group is known as Platonists.

Platonists are followers of the teachings the ancient Greek philosopher named Plato. For
Plato, the present world as we know it – with sight and sound, touch and taste – is just an
illusion.

In his mind, the goal of human life was to look past the touchable world that you live in
each day and discover what is real: that which is not physical at all. Everyone and
everything on earth, according to Plato, is physical and therefore lacking the perfection of
things that aren’t physical.

To be part of the creation, like we are, is to experience change and decay, so the best thing
that can happen to you is to leave behind your body and all traces of the physical, created
world.

The second group is called the Gnostics.

Gnostics believed they had attained a special degree of knowledge that set them apart from
everyone else. Like Plato, they believed that the material world, which can be seen, was
inferior to the “spiritual world” which can never be seen.

In fact they went further than Plato and held a worldview known as “absolute dualism,”
which believes that there are two co-equal divine beings – one who is good and another
who is evil. There is no evil in the one who is good, and there is no good in the one who is
evil. Bring this thinking down to level of creation and what do you get? You get the view
that the body, and what you do with it, has no significance because what really matters is
your mind. In other words, the mind is good and the body is not.

That’s why this group is called “Gnostics,” because they said that once people realized they
had a spark of the divine within themselves, that knowledge, which in Greek is gnosis,
would allow them to enter into a spiritual existence in which the material world would no
longer count. In fact, in this thinking, the physical creation, is actually the attempt of the
evil divine being to trap the your inner divine light from getting back to its real home.

So for a Gnostic, this material world is not good and it is not our home. We are trapped
here, imprisoned in these physical bodies, and we need to learn how to escape.

The last group that holds the view of pessimism is known as Dispensationalists.
Dispensationalists are a Christian version of this view, and I acknowledge that they hold this
view in a softer form than Platonists or Gnostics, but it would be disingenuous not to at
least mention what this Christian subgroup maintains as a vision of the future.

Dispensationalism is a system for interpreting the Bible that arrived on the scene in the
1800s and was first taught by a frustrated minister from Plymouth, England named John
Nelson Darby. The highlight of this system was the introduction of a brand-new concept
called “the rapture.”

This view envisions a world that becomes more and more degenerate until Jesus finally
removes the true Christians from the world, leaving nonbelievers behind to endure a seven-
year period of horrible tribulations which make the earth, in effect, a cosmic war-zone
destined for destruction.

Even though this view is held by some Christians, it doesn’t lend itself to the acts of creative
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goodness to which Christians are called to perform throughout the Scriptures. Tony
Campolo is a sociology professor at Eastern College who says (and I quote), “The
implication of dispensationalism is that there is no point to working toward peace, social
justice, the end of poverty, and the like, on the basis that such projects are ultimately
futile” (Letters to a Young Evangelical, 112).

In the pessimist’s vision of the future, God’s announcement in Genesis that creation is
“good,” never really happened. Or, if it did happen, “Well,” this thinking goes, “that was
then and this is now.”

This brings us to the second vision of future, which we’ll call OPTIMISM.

When asked the question, “Is creation good or is creation bad?” those who hold this vision
answer by saying, “Of course the creation is good, we’re getting better and better with each
generation!”

Those who answer the question this way are harder to pin down in clear-cut groups,
because this view is widely held, and even assumed, since the period known as the
Enlightenment in the late 1700s. The primary characteristic of this vision is a total buy-in to
the Idea of Progress. This idea of progress says that history and the world are on a happy,
steady incline toward Utopia – when everything’s going to be great for everyone.

For the last two centuries we have been fed variations of this idea: Elect this government
official and things will change. Use this new device and life will be easier. Spread democracy
and we can solve the world’s issues. Teach kids right from wrong and they won’t break the
law.

Optimism insists that we’ll become what we have the potential to become through our own
efforts at education and tolerance. Instead of creation and new creation, which come from
God, optimism and the idea of progress insist that science and technology will turn the stuff
of this world into the stuff of heaven.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, everyone from politicians to schoolteachers and
celebrities have told us to believe the world is getting better and better. But try telling that
to a sister whose brother died fighting in Iraq, a parent whose child committed suicide, a
farmer enduring the winter in Romania with no shoes, or a malnourished child in Ethiopia.

To think that we can solve all the world’s problems in our own strength, when we can barely
solve our own personal problems, must surely be called out as arrogance in its highest
form. That is what the current cultural shift into what’s called “Post-Modernity” is really all
about – calling out the arrogance of optimism.

But if you really want to know what the biggest problem with this vision of the future is, I’ll
tell you. The strictly optimistic view can’t actually address the severe problems of evil in the
world. This vision of the future caused people to explain away in the presence of World War
I, the Holocaust, the Great Depression, and World War II – and that was just the first half of
the 20th century!

Remember what I told you: your vision of the future makes all the difference in the world.
Those are prime examples that prove the point. And if you add to those events today’s drug
crime, gang violence, slave trade, and child pornography, then you really have to try hard
to be optimistic enough to keep believing in the idea of progress.
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So that brings us to the third vision of the future, which we’ll call REALISM.

This is a distinctly Christian vision of the future. When asked, “Is creation good or is
creation bad?” those who hold this vision answer by saying that creation is good, but human
sin and rebellion toward God has infected it down to its core, leaving nothing untouched.
But their answer doesn’t end there, as if they held the vision of pessimism.

They continue their answer by pointing out that because of God’s love and grace, he is
working patiently, faithfully, and thoroughly to release the whole creation from its present
bondage to decay and death.

The early Christians didn’t believe in progress as so many of us today are taught to do.
They didn’t think the world was getting better and better under its own power.

But neither did they believe that they would escape while the world got worse and worse.

The early Christians believed that God was at work through history, guiding and calling the
world toward healing, beauty, hope, and love. But that transition from the present era to
the new one would not be a matter of the destruction of the present world as we know it,
but of its radical renewal through the power of God.

They knew that if everything was going to be refreshed, and all wrongs were to be made
right, and all things were to be put back into proper order, then God had to do something
new, something as revolutionary as the first creation. But they went further and said the
“something new” that was needed, came in micro-form when Jesus was resurrected from
the dead. The implication, then, was that the “something new” that was needed, would
come in macro-form when Jesus is revealed from heaven in the future.

We are wise leave behind the other two visions of the future, pessimism and optimism, and
plant our feet here in this one called realism. That’s because the vision of the future that
realism puts forward is rooted in the Bible.

THE STORY
In the Bible we discover that we’re living in a great story, a drama, in which we are neither
the producer nor the main character. This story has a long history of people, places, and
actions - some are positive, some are negative, and some are somewhere in between.

But living within this story, as supporting characters, has brought great hope to people in
the midst of their pain. And I believe it can do the same for us today in the 21st century as
we wrestle with tension of a world that is filled with both laughter and tragedy.

This is the story the Bible is telling. It’s the story of God, of the heavens and the earth that
God has made, of his image that he placed in the creation, and into whom he breathed life.
It’s the story of redeeming that which God once called “good,” but now seems so bad. It’s
the story of blessing and curse, of sin and grace, of justice and evil, of death and
resurrection. And the theme that runs right down the middle of the whole grand story is the
unstoppable faithfulness of God.

As with any great story, this one has a main character. And so you’re not thinking
otherwise, the main character in the Bible is God. We meet this God in the very beginning –
creating with power, speaking with authority, caring with wisdom, and empowering with
love.
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“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1 NLT).

But with all of the ways people use the word “God” today, it’s important at the outset to say
that the story for Christians is about this God and not another.

It is this God we find liberating his people from slavery in the Exodus, covenanting with his
people in the Law of Moses, living among his people in the Tabernacle and then in the
Temple. It is this God who drives his stubborn and hard-hearted people away in exile, but it
is also this God who reaches out in tenderness and compassion to draw them back once
more. It is this God whom Jesus calls “Father,” and whom the Apostle Paul declares will
rightly judge all the peoples of the earth. And finally, it is this God we see joining his people
again, at the end of the book of Revelation, to dwell in unbroken and faithful union forever
and ever.

Hear these words:

“I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, ‘Look, God’s home is now among his people!
He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will
wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or
pain. All these things are gone forever’” (Revelation 21:3-4 NLT).

WRAP IT UP
The Bible holds out for us a vision of the future in which God intends to refresh everything
in creation – beginning with human beings and extending all the way to foreign relations,
weather patterns, and the animal kingdom.

In the next 2 weeks we’ll be exploring more about what God is doing to make that happen,
until his mercy, peace, justice, and love fill the whole creation as the waters cover the sea.

So is the creation good or is the creation bad?

Creation is good. And God’s plan is not to abandon it or destroy it, but to refresh
everything through the faithful acts of creative goodness performed by his people. There
will certainly come a day when creation is fully transformed and the people of God are
resurrected – following the pattern of Jesus – to live in the presence of our God.

That is the Christian hope offered to each of us in the Christian message.

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refreshEVERYTHING
“Visions of the Future”

Creation as we know it is ______________________.

The same world produces _____________ comedy __________ tragedy.

Key Question: Is creation good or is creation bad?

3 Different Visions of the Future

1) ______________________ “the world is not a good place”

a) ___________________________ (hard form)

b) ___________________________ (hardest form)

c) ___________________________ (softer form)

2) _________________________ “the world is a great place”

3) _________________________ “the world is good, but needs to be refreshed”

Story

The main character in the Bible is ________________.

Genesis 1:1 (NLT) “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Revelation 21:3-4 (NLT) “I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, ‘Look, God’s
home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God
himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no
more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.’”

God’s plan is to ____________________ ______________________.

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refreshEVERYTHING
“Visions of the Future”

OUT OF ORDER
Creation as we know it is ___________________.

The same world produces BOTH AND tragedy.

_______ comedy ________

Key Question: Is creation good or is creation bad?

3 Different Visions of the Future

PESSIMISM
1) ______________________ “the world is not a good place”

PLATONISM
a) ___________________________ (hard form)

GNOSTICISM
b) ___________________________ (hardest form)

DISPENSATIONALISM
c) ___________________________ (softer form)

OPTIMISM
2) _________________________ “the world is a great place”

3) REALISM
_________________________ “the world is good, but needs to be refreshed”

Story

GOD
The main character in the Bible is ________________.

Genesis 1:1 (NLT) “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Revelation 21:3-4 (NLT) “I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, ‘Look, God’s
home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God
himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no
more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.’”

REFRESH
God’s plan is to __________________ EVERYTHING
______________________.
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