Sunday, August 24, 2008

An Atheist Heaven

The utopian ideal was articulated best in Thomas More's famous tome (creatively titled Utopia):
"In Utopia, where every man has a right to everything... no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity; and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich."

We may smile at Thomas More's naivete. How foolish, to think that a perfect government can be achieved, and that it would successfully solve the world's problems.

But I have to wonder: is his hope really so far-removed from our own?

Most of us wouldn't call it "the chase for utopia" in so many words, of course, but there it remains--that deep, ever-lurking desire for perfection in a sin-ridden world. As Christians, it's easy to acknowledge that this natural yearning will never be fully satiated on earth. And so, instead of sighing and waiting for a vain dream to be actualized, we comfort each other with thoughts of our eventual destination: our own future Utopia. We call it heaven, but that's nothing more than semantics, since it tends to translate as the same thing in our minds.

Ah, "heaven." The place of everlasting bliss and perfect health, without grief or discord of any kind. You can have anything that your heart desires, because all your desires will be good and pure. Gone are all the tears and pain that accompanied you on earth. You're reunited with all your loved ones, and all is restored to tranquil harmony. It's Eden again, all over.

No surprises there. You can be an atheist, and still find the idea thrilling. That's just utopia after death, and everyone wants utopia.

But what if God was absent from His home? What if His presence was the only thing missing? Imagine it. Could you be content? When you picture heaven, is Christ's presence a footnote, or is He the only reason that everything else would hold any meaning?

John Piper is dead-on:

"Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. People who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel." (God is the Gospel, 47)
The gift of salvation from eternal torment was not the ultimate purpose of the gospel or the primary motivation for Christ's death. Blotting out our transgressions was the means to accomplish something else, not the end.

It is the glorious truth of the gospel that Christ hung on the cross, bearing the full brunt of God's wrath, that we might be forgiven. And yet, if we believe that a legal pardon from the Father is the greatest good that the gospel accomplishes, our understanding of the gospel is anemic. Christ's blood was not spilled just to buy a bundle of tickets that would admit us through the pearly gates of an atheistic paradise.

In the Garden of Gethsamene, just before He was led to His crucifixion, Jesus knelt and prayed: "Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (Jn. 17:1-3).

There's the answer. The cross existed so that we could know God, delight in Him, and savor His glory. Christ died to usher us into an eternal, vibrant relationship with the Triune God of the Bible. He, and He alone, is the reason why heaven will be glorious, and our lives on earth can be filled with the inexpressable joy spoken of in 1 Peter 1. Without Him, we would have nothing.

"Propitiation, redemption, forgiveness, imputation, sanctification, liberation, healing, heaven-- none of these is good news except for one reason: they bring us to God for our everlasting enjoyment of Him. If we believe all these things have happened to us, but do not embrace them for the sake of getting to God, they have not happened to us."

Have you been looking forward to a God-less utopia?