Direction Home

[A]nd said to them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead … -- Luke 24:46

Sometimes I get on my motorcycle and ride, not to go anywhere but to enjoy the road.  I always, though, have a destination because I will, no matter what direction I take or how long I am gone, arrive at home.  I also know that there will come a day, and it may be this one, when I will arrive at a different, though not altogether unexpected, terminus.  We may dread that station, choose not to think about it, or look forward to it. 

We spend a lot of time and energy talking about how we should live as Christians.  Back in 1976, Francis Schaeffer wrote a book called How Should We Then Live? which seemed to be the foundational text for much of the Christian conservative movement  among evangelicals.  References to Schaeffer were everywhere in the ‘80s and early ‘90s on Christian radio and in various publications.  I have come to wonder, though, if the first question that must be answered isn’t Why Should We Then Live. 

Schaeffer accused the secular culture of resting its intellectual achievements on assumptions that it denied were true.  Most Christians when talking about disasters and strife and suffering will say that God does not constantly intervene in the natural order of the universe but instead primarily employs that very order – which we believe He created, to bring about His will and His ends.  Sometimes atheists will respond to this by saying that a God who does not make Himself known and cannot be discerned by scientific means – if He does exist , is effectively the same as no God at all.  Yet these same people are amazed – and it amazing -- to find there are discernable, understandable laws in the universe that can be discovered and described by our mathematics, that our minds seem to reflect, somehow, the universe. 

We are here, so everything must have worked.  I agree that you can’t prove the existence of God by talking about the odds against life and consciousness and humanity.  It does not matter how infinitesimally small the chances were that we would exist, we do, in fact, exist.  At least I do.  Some of you I’m not so sure about.  On the internet I could be talking to bots that passed the test. 

To me it seems that, with God, man has a reason to exist, a “why” to live.  Our atheists friends can come up with a reasonable facsimile of an ethic and a how to live.  Their why will fall back on selfish genes, on determinism, on continuing the species, or simply a shrug and a turn to “don’t know; don’t really care”.  And that’s fine, so long as we are all clear that a God-denying worldview is necessarily nihilistic and absurd.  Not many people are honest enough to live as though that were true, and fewer still want to live in a world where the majority lives as though that were true. 

Instead many look for a science fiction hope of a singularity, of some kind of pseudo immortality, of racing out to the stars faster than light, of uploading their brains to a quantum computer and downloading to perfected clones. 

It’s not going to happen.  For one thing, the brain and the mind are not the same.  Consciousness and identity do not reside solely in the central nervous system anymore that one’s deadlift capacity is a matter of hand strength.  Brain and body are the interfaces, and the brain, to some extent a repository.  You know before you remember you know.  You have decided before the decision is recorded in your neural networks.  Good luck uploading Ted Williams’ ability to hit .400 from his frozen head. 

Jesus knew where He was going, and He knew why He was in the world.  For most of us the way is less clear and well-defined.  We stumble along doing our best to follow a path we may see only dimly, often wondering if we have not strayed too far, not sure if Someone walks with us, guiding us as we go.  We walk by faith, not by sight.  I did not, I don’t think, have to be here – either where I am right now, or, perhaps, in the world at all.  Riding my bike I’ve taken some wrong turns and hit a few deadends.  I’ve been lost, but I’ve never been so lost that I didn’t know I had a home.  I might not have known how to get there, but I knew where it was. 

There is a destination for every life.  We have a home, however lost we may be right now.

Heaven on Earth

If Heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t wanna go – Hank Williams, Jr.

Heaven is not a place, but a consciousness of God. – Anonymous

Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. -- John 14:23

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ … -- Acts 17:26-28 (emphasis mine)

In the quote from Acts, as Paul spoke upon the Areopagus in Athens, we can catch a glimpse of how and why the Apostle was so successful in “turning the world upside down”.  All that those non-Jewish people had learned, how they lived, their myths and poetry pointed toward the One True God.  The heart of man is open.  Paul offered them, not gods atop Olympus, but God alive on the throne of their own being, present, immediate, aware – the living God of love and mercy and righteousness. 

We have the same need today.  Old men like me wax nostalgic for the world of the 1950s where another generation recalled the 1920s.  We are all, as the old song cries, longing for home.  The people, the voices, the laughter, the food, the music speak to us and point us to the One from whom we came and to whom we journey.  Our little customs and traditions are signs on the way.  He is present in the way we build our houses, in the hills we climb, in winter snows and summer rains, in tribulations and hardships, in joys and triumphs. 

Heaven will be a lot like Dixie for some of us, a lot like the Ozarks for me.  That which makes me love these poor, rocky hills with their multiplicity of streams and little secret springs is Heaven, for He made this path to lead me home. 

A Bed, A Table, A Chair and A Lamp

Your heart must not be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. If not, I would have told you. I am going to away to prepare a place for you. If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also. – John 14:1-3

This is a famously misunderstood verse from the KJV “in My Father’s house are many mansions”. Though it has spawned countless references in hymns and gospel songs, the correct concept is not of some English manor or a home in Beverly Hills. Rather Jesus is talking about a resting place of travelers. It is related to the idea of ‘abiding’ or ‘dwelling’ so prominent in John’s Gospel.

Also, the meaning is not predominantly about death or heaven. Becoming a child of God, a son of the Father gives us admittance to the Father’s “house” – e.g., the house of David, meaning someone in the family.

When I am done with this world, or when God is done with me in this world, I will leave this physical body behind. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul compares the body to a tent, subject to destruction. He reassures us that should it be destroyed we need not fear or worry as we have “a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” He is expanding the metaphor of the tent or tabernacle – recalling the move of the Ark of the Covenant from a tent to a temple.

Not only is there no reason for my heart to be troubled, it is imperative that I not allow the things that happen in this world to trouble me. Reading through the Proverbs, I see that diligence, integrity, and prudence are commended, but not unending toil and struggle. “The Lord’s blessing enriches, and struggle adds nothing to it” (Proverbs 10:22). To fret and fear, to be troubled in heart are indications that I do not fully trust God. “Believe in God,” Jesus says, “Believe also in Me.” Knowing Jesus, I can believe and enter into a place of rest and peace.

It is good, I think, to be reminded that we are strangers in a strange land.

This world is not my home,
I’m just a’passin’ through.
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.

We are in this world but not of it.

My mistake is often to put that rest and reward ahead – in the sweet by-and-by. Jesus, though, promised it in the present. Sure, heaven will be a place where the “wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest”, but it is not the traveler’s rest of which the Lord spoke in John 14.

One day Elisha went to Shunem. A prominent woman who lived there persuaded him to eat some food. So whenever he passed by, he stopped there to eat. Then she said to her husband, "I know that the one who often passes by here is a holy man of God, so let's make a little room upstairs and put a bed, a table, a chair and a lamp there for him. Whenever he comes, he can stay there." 2 Kings 4:8-10

It's not a vast mansion, just a place to stop and rest, to be refreshed. It is a place where I am welcomed and loved. I find it a refuge of contentment and security along the way.