This world is not my home
This world is not my home, I'm just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.
I think I'll be buying the latest book from NT Wright and I'll read it after my exams... If you have read/watch (the video on) my previous post, you may know what the book is about, it is about the misconception we have about "Heaven".
Just read the review from Internet Monk about the book,
It has occurred to me this week that fundamentalism’s appeal within my own tradition has a great deal to do with anti-intellectualism and accessibility. A fundamentalist preacher can confidently haul out the certainties of creationism and make every student in my school who is failing biology feel that he knows more than a professor at Yale. Watch a few hours of Hovind/Hamm videos and you are ready to trounce any Biology professor at Oxford or Cambridge. Fundamentalism is about creating that kind of confidence out of the shallowest, cheapest materials.
This kind of Bible-waving simpleton-ism models everything that is wrong with the Christian approach to intellectual and academic issues. Armed with blatant misunderstandings of the Bible, the fundamentalist isn’t just competent to say the wise of this world may miss the truth of the Gospel (which is absolutely true); he/she’s also competent to make pronouncements on every subject, preach distortions and outright falsehoods as facts and drag whatever audience is available to believe what amounts to mythology as Biblical fact.
Wright is another approach. He is deeply prepared. He knows his history, Bible, languages and theology. He also knows the errors and minefields on the subject, but instead of coming off as an arrogant ass, he shows his readers what it looks like to approach Christian belief with critical seriousness, humility, and the courage to say, “…or maybe not.” He offers up a highly original alternative way of reading the Bible, one that has stimulated many of us toward the Bible in ways no other writer has- often because we’re convinced he’s made a wrong turn.
Frankly, I am sick of the type of simplistic Christianity we have, sick of reading about how fundamentalists arrange tours in museums to tell children how wrong the scientists are about evolution, and stuff like that.
Read more about the book in this article Bishop Wright wrote himself. Here's a tiny bit from it... (It's tiny, coz the article is 4 pages long, haha!)
When we talk with biblical precision about the resurrection, we discover an excellent foundation for lively and creative Christian work in the present world—not, as some suppose, for an escapist or quietist piety...
When Paul speaks in Philippians 3 of being "citizens of heaven," he doesn't mean that we shall retire there when we have finished our work here. He says in the next line that Jesus will come from heaven in order to transform the present humble body into a glorious body like his own. Jesus will do this by the power through which he makes all things subject to himself. This little statement contains in a nutshell more or less all Paul's thought on the subject. The risen Jesus is both the model for the Christian's future body and the means by which it comes...
The mission of the church is nothing more or less than the outworking, in the power of the Spirit, of Jesus' bodily resurrection. It is the anticipation of the time when God will fill the earth with his glory, transform the old heavens and earth into the new, and raise his children from the dead to populate and rule over the redeemed world he has made...
If that is so, mission must urgently recover from its long-term schizophrenia. The split between saving souls and doing good in the world is not a product of the Bible or the gospel, but of the cultural captivity of both...If it is true, as I have argued, that the whole world is now God's holy land, we must not rest as long as that land is spoiled and defaced. This is not an extra to the church's mission. It is central.
I bought a book yesterday. I can't resist it after reading a bit of it in the bookstore, that part was about a worker who helped people with AIDS in Africa telling the pastors how they made things worse. =P I know I am supposed to be studying. It is Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. I was hoping to find some more examples on what we can do if the Kingdom of God is here, when we pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done." What should we be doing?? I was running out of examples last time I tried to teach on the Gospel of Mark on the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is so NOT about heaven (or at least the image we got about heaven.) Here is a part from the first chapter:
Why do we need to have singular and firm opinion on the protection of the unborn, but not about how to help poor people and how to avoid killing people and how to avoid killing people labeled enemies who are already born? Or why are we so concerned about the legitimacy of homosexual marriage but not about the legitimacy of fossil fuels or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? (and in particular, our weapons as opposed to theirs)? Or why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of species but so few are concerned about the extinction of species? Then I'd wonder, if we religious people have seized on a couple of hot-button issues, what other questions should we be thinking about that nobody's asking??
What should we be doing instead? What can I do?
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