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Posts tagged new creation

Salvation’s purpose

Wise words from a wise pastor (Tim Keller) at rooftopchurch:

“I’m trying to overcome a typical, wrong, unbiblical attitude on the part of Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, toward this material world.

There’s a tendency for many Christians to think of this material world – the world we’re in now – as a temporary theater for getting saved so that some day you can escape this material world and live happily in heaven forever.  An awful lot of Christians say, ‘this world is going to die, it’s going to burn up, and while we’re here basically the only thing that’s important is to get people saved, and if they get saved eventually they’ll be able to leave this world.’  So it’s a temporary theater for salvation.

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tryingtofollow: It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic… We do a lot of recycling at the twe12thFloor.  It’s not because we want to be nice people, or even responsible.  It’s because of this deep belief that God made the earth good, and that part of what it means to be human is to care for it in anticipation of the new creation, which is coming, and, which, in Jesus’ resurrected body, has already begun. When you honour God’s creation you honour the Creator.  We remember and/or forget God in our eating, in our drinking, and in our discarding.

tryingtofollow:

It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic…

We do a lot of recycling at the twe12thFloor.  It’s not because we want to be nice people, or even responsible.  It’s because of this deep belief that God made the earth good, and that part of what it means to be human is to care for it in anticipation of the new creation, which is coming, and, which, in Jesus’ resurrected body, has already begun.

When you honour God’s creation you honour the Creator.  We remember and/or forget God in our eating, in our drinking,

and in our discarding.

U2's Bono: Grace over Karma 

In Sunday School today we were talking about how the Bible’s claim that God made the earth GOOD is significantly different from other religious claims, which see the Earth and the physical universe as being essentially evil.  In one the goal is to leave the Earth; in the other, the goal is to redeem it.  In one the end is Nirvana; in the other, the end is New Creation.  Nirvana is deeply tied to the idea of Karma; New Creation to a belief in Grace.  I won’t bother to explain the terms.  But the difference is real.  We can’t take our basics for granted; these are some radical, powerful ideas that we Christians put forth.  And I thought that somehow, U2’s lead singer Bono brought that to bear beautifully in this interview.  Click on the title above for the link.  Grace be with you.