Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Heaven

Who is the most unlike you person in your contacts on your phone? Who do you know (well enough to enter into your phone) that is different?
I have been thinking a lot about Jesus lately, and thinking about His life and my life. If I had written my perception of God and the story when He sent His Son here the script would have been much different.
I would tend to think of Jesus spending a whole lot more time in "religious" places. Carrying on deep theological talks with well versed and intelligent people. Not that He didn't do those things but that is not the context of most of the stories in the gospel. His story was carried out in the "normal" world with normal and even abnormal people. But maybe they weren't really abnormal.
I have been trying to wrap my head around something for sometime, how much of God's creating man both as a whole and individually has been screwed up by us humans?
What I mean by this if man was created in God's image how much of imperfection diasability pain etc is caused by sin and how much is actually good we just misinterpret it?
For instance what does Kyle look like in heaven? What is a perfect Kyle for eternity?
Of course there is all sorts of thoughts of running and physically doing things that he wasn't able to do on this earth. But is a perfect Kyle him with physical abilities. Im not sure, and the reason I am not sure is because of the way Jesus acted here on earth.
Perfection in people is not what we think it is, it would have been pretty easy for Jesus to say all you need to do is sit with the Pharisees and the religious people and that is what heaven is going to be like.
If heaven is so much like those religious places it must have been extremely uncomfortable for Jesus to spend a good chunk of His time in places that were nothing like heaven with people who did not resemble those in heaven.
Now I am not saying that Kyle won't have a whole body in heaven and won't be able to do physical activities, but I am not sure that is the point. I am pretty sure God has not anointed the white American healthy male Christian as the perfect species of creation. I am pretty sure I am not the lense that God views everyone else through. But yet that is what I sometimes believe or act like.
I am pretty sure there will still be a huge amount of diversity in heaven, but we won't care. I am pretty sure perfect teeth aren't going to be such an issue. I am pretty sure material possessions have little to no value. I am pretty sure the attritubtes of love joy peace patient kindness goodness and self control are going to overwealth us.
As I look at Kyle this is what I see- I see these fruits in his life, I see that he is emulating Christ even with his physical disabilities.
I don't think Jesus' point of spending lots of time with the the normal and the ab-normal as a way to turn them into religious rather I see there being a whole lot more like Jesus than we are comfortable with.

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