A little rant from a CRC-Voices post I made on the significance of the resurrection and ascension.

I’m listening to some of the speeches given at a Calvin Seminar on the Ascension. http://www.calvin.edu/worship/idis/theology/ascension_shout.php

You’re approach pretty much cuts us off from the resurrection and the ascension. Imagine someone would say this:

I’m going to really treat my neighbor well until 2012 when I will break into his house, murder him in his sleep, bury his body in the back yard and steal his stuff.

If you look at my treatment of my neighbor before 2012 you’d say “Paul is a good neighbor” That judgment is determined by the calendar. After 2012 you’d say “Paul is a homicidal monster!” Which one is Paul really? The “just as long as he treats people well NOW” can’t tell the whole story.

Two men work in a sweat shop stitching together cheap clothing. One of them believes that after 20 years of this his eyes will be shot, his body broken, and his son will be chained to the old sewing machine he’s wasting his life away on. The second one believes that in fact 20 years from then a new regime will take control of his country, the owners of the factory will be called to account for their poor treatment and this sweat shop worker will receive a comfortable settlement check that will allow him to retire nicely and take care of his family. Is it true that the future doesn’t matter? One’s perspective on the future in fact controls the meaning of the present.

I heard a bit of a radio report today about a guy who was a death-ologist or something. He died and one of the recordings simply tells people “when I’m dead I’m dead and all that lives on of me are my DNA in my kids, the memories of me that my loved ones have, and whatever books I wrote and the reputation I developed.

That’s a very Greek perspective on a life. How would that perspective in fact shape how he lived while he was alive? I assume he would prioritize those things that in fact in his opinion post date his physical life in our midst. What does his perspective say about the billions of lives lived, people loved, who never wrote a book, never had a biological child, never accomplished anything that this world considered to be noteworthy, etc. It means their lives, according to this perspective have no meaning. Future determines meaning.

Let’s imagine the secular materialists are all right and at some point human life simply ends on this planet. Maybe we’ve wrecked the world. Maybe we’ve blown ourselves up. Maybe we were just really nice to each other but the sun ran out of fuel, and other planets are just too far away and the world just died in the cold. If someone would be around to say of us “we were all just really nice to each other” it would seem a weak testimony given to humanity’s existence, but then again it doesn’t matter because there would no longer be anyone to care. Do we look back at the dinosaurs and judge them on how nice they were to each other?