Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that religious teachings focus on bringing divine qualities to our earthly existence rather than just aiming for an afterlife.
N. T. Wright's quote suggests that much of religious scripture emphasizes the importance of creating a heavenly experience on Earth, rather than merely looking forward to an afterlife in heaven. It points to a cultural fixation on death and what comes afterward, diverting attention from the transformative power of spirituality that can manifest in daily life, urging individuals to seek and cultivate a sense of heaven in their current existence.
In practice
During a church sermon to inspire a congregation about living purposefully.
The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven." "The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.
True worship doesn't put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half-hearted, doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry what the person in the next pew is doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.
Most of the things that really matter require faith. How do I know that my wife loves me? How do I know that Mozarts Jupiter Symphony is sublime and beautiful? There are all sorts of things which come at a more lowly level than that - How do I know that two plus two equals four? There are different layers, different types of knowing.
To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.
Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.
I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws.
The New Testament is of full authority and open to the understanding of simple men as to the points most needful to salvation.
For the Baul, life is not a serious thing. It is fun, it is laughter, it is joy. So you cannot find anything like the seriousness of a church-goer, or the long faces of so-called religious people in the world of the Bauls. They love laughter, they love fun. They enjoy small things with tremendous respect. Ordinarily, religions are very long-faced, very sombre, serious, because they have to be - they are against life.
As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
This moment! - this here-now - is forgotten when you start thinking in terms of achieving something. When the achieving mind arises, you lose contact with the paradise you are in.
Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation.
In a world of democracies, in a world where the great projects that have set humanity on fire are the projects of the emancipation of individuals from entrenched social division and hierarchy; in such a world individuals must never be puppets or prisoners of the societies or cultures into which they have been born.
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