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Burning away the old creation to reveal the new creation in Christ
Is God going to incinerate the Earth?
And does it matter?
Jonathan Merritt
When I
was a child, my grandfather burned trash in a heap out behind his house.
I loved
throwing old magazines and paper plates into the white-hot center, piece by
piece. The once-colorful pages and flower-dotted discs disappeared into billowy
smoke.
The experience
is actually a lot like what many Christians’ believe will happen at the end of
time.
It’s
the kind of theology espoused in the popular Left
Behind book series that, according to
a Baylor University study, more than half of
conservative Protestants say they have read.
And
it’s a view supported by many evangelical pastors and theologians today.
This
view has been called “throwaway theology” or “scorched earth theology.”
But
those phrases don’t seem to do justice to the perspective, why people believe
it, or what difference it may make.
So, I
decided to devote some time to exploring the issue.
Is God going to incinerate the Earth in an apocalyptic bonfire?
And, if so, does it really matter?
Peter,
the Fire Starter
The
idea that God is going to burn up the Earth is not Biblically unfounded.
It’s
rooted primarily in the writings of
the Apostle Peter:
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens
will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the
earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”
What
does Peter mean by “fire” and “laid bare”?
First,
we note that the picture of fire in the Scripture is most often something that
purifies rather than destroys.
The
presence of God and the Holy Spirit are associated with fire, for example, but
this doesn’t mean that coming into contact with God will destroy you.
Rather,
It transforms you. It burns away the old creation to reveal the new creation in
Christ.
Peter, who seems particularly interested in the image of fire,
actually writes early
in his first epistle that Jesus has given us a new birth to test the “genuineness
of your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined
by fire.”
He may have been riffing on the Prophet Malachi who says more
directly to our point: “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can
stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s
soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the
Levites and refine them like gold and silver.”
Peter,
and Malachi before him, speak of a refiner’s fire whereby
Christ burns away the impurities to leave only what is pure.
He also
compares this event to Noah’s flood, which didn’t destroy the Earth but
cleansed it.
So “to
be laid bare” here does not mean to “burn up” or “incinerate.”
This is what Peter explains when he writes, “Nevertheless
we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which
righteousness dwells.”
A new
heavens and new earth is a space where all the impurities have been burned away
and the creation — which God called “good” in Genesis 1 — is purified to
what God intended it to be.
As N.T.
Wright, perhaps the foremost living New Testament scholar, says in The
Early Christian Letters for Everyone:
As with the rest of the
New Testament, Peter is not saying that the present world of space, time and
matter is going to be burnt up and destroyed. That is more like the view of
ancient Stoicism – and of some modern ideas, too. What will happen, as many early
Christian teachers said, is that some sort of ‘fire’, literal or metaphorical,
will come upon the whole earth, not to destroy, but to test everything out, and
to purify it by burning up everything that doesn’t meet the test. (119)
There
are other reasons to think that Peter doesn’t teach what some evangelicals
think he does, but suffice to say that I do not believe the world will be
incinerated like my grandfather’s garbage.
I
believe the whole creation will be restored to the perfect state it was created
in through a refinement process when Christ returns (see, for example, Paul’s
teachings in Colossians 1).
And I
believe this because of the Bible, not in spite of it.
The Future
“Fire” and Our Present Reality
So,
what difference does one’s view on the Earth’s final future really make? For
some, it has a profound impact on one’s understanding of creation
stewardship
A few
years ago, for example, I participated in a debate on creation care at a small
Baptist college in the Southeast with an outspoken opponent of environmental
care.
At one point in the exchange, he grew frustrated with me,
shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Well, it’s all going to burn up anyway.”
“If that is the case,” I said, “then would
you be willing to walk outside this lecture hall and smoke a pack of cigarettes
in front of all these attendees?”
He
looked puzzled.
“If everything is ultimately going to be destroyed — even you
and your body — and according to you, that negates our responsibility in the
meantime, then it doesn’t matter if you have a good smoke,” I
said. “So I’ll pay for the pack of Camels.”
His comments and others who think like him seem to beg the
question, “Why care about the future of an earth that has no future?”
But
my point in response was not lost on him or the audience. Something inside
of him instinctively knew that the future of his physical body didn’t alter his
responsibility to care for it in the present.
In the
same way, believing that the Earth will one day be destroyed, doesn’t release
us from our present obligation to manage these properly in the interim.
While
believing that the physical world will end in an apocalyptic barbeque may cause
some to avoid caring for creation, it shouldn’t.
Jesus
was clear that those who follow him must love
their neighbors.
This
love means we have to consider not only those who we borrow cups of sugar and
leaf blowers from, but also our global neighbors around the world.
And Jesus was also clear that we must care for “the
least of these,” which
include the poor and vulnerable around the globe who are most affected by
environmental degradation.
Even if
there was no explicit command to care for creation – and there is – these
exhortations would be enough.
If we
love the Creator and the Son He sent, we must care for the creation and those
who depend on it.
One of
Jesus’ most famous stories sheds a final beam of light on this issue.
In Matthew
25, Jesus talks about a businessman who gives his servants some
money and then heads out of town.
Two
servants cause the money to flourish and grow while a third buries it in the
ground and goes about his business, never giving it a second thought.
When
the business owner returns from his journey, he comes to settle accounts.
The
ones that cared for what he left in their charge he rewards, and the one who
ignored his responsibility was cursed.
When the Master returns one day, Jesus says, he will ask a very
direct question: “What did you do with all the stuff I left in your care?”
·
What did you do with the people I brought into your path?
·
What did you do with the needs in your community you had the
ability to meet?
·
What did you do with the creation I called “good” and asked you
to care for?
No
matter what happens to the Earth at the end of time — whether it is destroyed
or refined — this question will need to be answered.
And when it does, the Scripture says, the nations will be
stirred up, the dead will be judged, and the time will come for God to “reward
Your bond-servants the prophets and the saints and those who fear Your name,
the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth.”
What we
believe matters and what we do with those beliefs does too.
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