How NOT to Misread the Bible (Part 7): Why Make the World Better When the Future Is Doom and Gloom?

Since the Bible is doom and gloom about the end-times, how can there be hope to make the world a better place?  The best we can do, some reason, is to be raptured away before the world collapses in on itself. Because people are often anticipating the worst, there is often seen what might be called the church of the Chicken Little who is always running around and proclaiming, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

• China is taking over
• Globalism is swallowing democracies
• Families are falling apart
• Elections are not legitimate
• Plagues are spreading
• Climates are changing

So, if God’s Story is one of restoration from brokenness, why does it end with such devastation with the book of Revelation?  How can there be a mission to work for a better future when the message appears to be that the sky is falling?  The answer is that the Bible is not doom and gloom, nor is it simply rainbows, butterflies and rose gardens.  It is realistic about hope for the future, but also the dark and sin hardened realities that have to be overcome. As the Reverend Martin Luther King proclaimed:

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Rev. Martin Luther King

The arc of history is moving toward the restoration of all that is broken. Jesus Christ set in motion a plan to see it repaired and will return physically to earth to make sure the restoration is completely done: perfect justice, complete healing, established peace. God is restoring all that is broken but not all at once.  God’s kingdom is advancing against foolish and self-centered destructiveness. Those familiar with the biblical story should not be shocked by the hardened opposition to be overcome. Realizing this gives the best road map toward understanding how to act for a better future while protecting ourselves from becoming jaded due to unrealistic expectations.  There are three key truths about change and the future: 

1. We can engage in hopeful action.  Justice and peace are the arc of history because God is restoring what is broken. We are called to work with him in the restoring process. 
2. We can be realistic by first seeking to change hearts and minds.  Life is deeply problematic and overwhelmingly complex which makes wide scale change, in the short term, a fools errand.  We have to celebrate small changes taking place while they occur.
3. We can be faithful as change is pursued, but slow in coming.  The story of the world is ultimately being written by God whose plan moves forward with steady precision.  

With these three truths in mind, the church keeps its steady and sane voice rather than copying the world’s noise, antics, and paranoia. God is restoring all that is broken. So, how do we see the biblical story as one that is hopeful for change and not a Chicken Little hysteria?

From Brokenness to Freedom

Previously, we have seen that the story of the Bible can be understood in six acts.

Act 1: The World’s Beginnings  God created humanity in a world with flourishing beauty and life-giving abundance without anything to spoil it. 

Act 2: Humanity’s Rebellion  People rebelled from this original divine artistry and purpose. They traded life-giving abundance for a world governed by self-centered brokenness.  The world descended into a moral fall in which it was impossible for humanity to recover alone.

Act 3: Israel’s Quest  God stepped in to save his story and set in motion a plan to restore the world from this place of brokenness by taking one nation (from the descendants of Abraham) and setting them apart to be a light and guide to other nations. This was the dawn of this restoration from brokenness. 

“God’s future Kingdom, where healing and justice and love will reign supreme for eternity, was being brought into the present through the ministry of Jesus. In Jesus, humanity was experiencing the presence of God’s future.”

George Ladd

Act 4: The King’s Arrival At the height of this story, God sent Jesus to the earth: truly God and truly man who lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death on the cross, and rose to vanquish sin and the darkness of evil. He was the very standard of understanding how God viewed humanity and how we should treat one another, what true justice looks like. Through Jesus’ life and ministry, God’s restoration was breaking into our human experience.

Act 5: The Kingdom Coming After Jesus had completed his work of demonstrating the power of love over all the brokenness caused by the world’s rebellion and evil, his followers are launched on a mission to expand this life-giving freedom and dignity to every corner of humanity, one conversation, one act of love, one wrong turned right at a time.

Act 6:  Homecoming  The final act tells us Jesus returns and restores what was not fixed and overthrows that which resists love and wholeness. This is the monumental ending to the story as well as the beginning of a new one which never ends. This is the restoration of a reality like the Garden of Eden, but much better because the potential for evil will be removed. And the declaration will be made:

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.”

Revelation 11:15

Chad Bird

Right now we are in Act 5: The Kingdom Coming moving toward Act 6: Homecoming.  When I became engaged to my wife (Brenda), it was like we were already married but not yet. There were six months from engagement until the wedding ceremony. There is a sense in which God’s kingdom is advancing, but it will not be fully here until Jesus returns to bring full restoration and all wrongs will be made right. We are “living between the times.”  Biblical teachers often call this “between the times” the Already/Not Yet. This means the kingdom is already here but not yet completely here. We live in between the Already/Not Yet.

Below are some biblical expressions of this reality. With each passage I will add parenthetically where the kingdom is already and not yet.

“In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. (already) Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them.” (not yet)

Hebrews 2:8

^“Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed…because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’  (already) Then he said to his disciples, ‘The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it.  People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.'” (not yet)  

Luke 17:20-24

“Dear friends, now we are children of God, (already) and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (not yet)

1 John 3:2 

What this means?

Because of this tension with the already/not yet, we do not need to have a Chicken Little mentality. We should not run around declaring that “the sky is falling” with every adverse event. Chad Bird writes:

There is no panic in heaven. Over the chaos of this world reigns the King of kings, Jesus the Resurrected, before whom every knee will eventually bow, whether they like it or not. Every governmental authority now — presidents, kings, prime ministers, you name it — are in lame-duck administrations. Their time is ending. Put not your trust in politicians or parties or ballot boxes. Christ and his kingdom are everlasting. And into that kingdom he calls us all to find forgiveness, life, and peace.

Against the oppressive and destructive powers, the followers of Jesus have advanced life-giving realities which are sneak previews of a perfect and restored world to come. First and foremost this is done through sharing the reality of forgiveness and a transformed life guided by love and purpose. From the ripple effects of this in the lives of individuals emerges new social realities:

“You and Your plan of redemption
It is arching against
The fall of the earth
And no one but You
Can pick up these pieces
And no one but You
Can put them together”

Ghost Ship (Band)

• Widespread democracy over tyranny (dignity of individuals)
• Widespread literacy over ignorance (education to read the Bible)
• Widespread technology over superstition (earth is created for our stewardship and not divine)
• Widespread medical access over disease (medical missions and hospitals)
• Widespread economic liberty over poverty (Protestant work ethic)
• Widespread compassion over neglect (charity among the poor and suffering unique to Christianity)

These are just to name a very few. Yet, all of these have advanced not toward a utopia or a heaven on earth but rather a civilization where the veneer between the rule of law and anarchy can be very thin. Where the gospel has spread there has been the reduction of poverty, oppression and evil, though not its elimination. This elimination will not happen until the end when Christ returns and overthrows the tyranny of evil that refuses to surrender to God’s advancing kingdom of love. This means that the days are numbered for the kingdoms of this world that set themselves up against God.

The PBS series Civilizations near the end of episode 1, viewers are taken to an ancient Mayan city in Mexico. Entombed beneath a canopy of trees are the remains of more than 6,500 buildings. The tallest is a massive ornately decorated temple whose steps climb to 180 feet (the height of a 15-story building). Standing at the foot of a massive stepped temple, which is now abandoned, an archeologist explains the cultural rationale for such ornate, expansive building:

Ultimately, all civilizations want exactly what they can’t have; the conquest of time. So they build bigger, and higher, and grander, as if they could build their way out of mortality. It never works. There always comes a moment when the most populous of cities with their markets and temples and palaces and funeral tombs are simply abandoned. And that most indefatigable leveler of all, mother nature, closes in, covering the place with desert sand or strangling it with vegetation. And then civilization dies the death of deaths, invisibility.

All nations come to an end. But there is a government which will stand the test of time which is emerging now: the reign of Christ’s kingdom:

Of the greatness of his government and peace
    there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
    and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
    with justice and righteousness
    from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
    will accomplish this.

Isaiah 9:7

In the meantime, we can be hopeful, realistic and faithful.