a new earth

About a month ago, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) moved the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to doomsday, putting the time at five minutes to midnight. The thousands of ready-to-launch nuclear weapons in the world today were one of the reasons for the time change--but only one. For the first time in history, the BAS listed a second factor in their measure of problems that have the ability to destroy humanity: climate change. As Sir Michael Rees put it, "Nuclear weapons still pose the most immediate and catastrophic threat to humanity, but climate change...also [has] the the potential to end civilization as we know it."

It's a frightening thought. But even more frightening to me is the reality that many Christians don't feel the shudder of fear that ought to accompany such a prediction. I've heard plenty of arguments why we shouldn't be worried about (or do anything to prevent) the end of the world: God wouldn't allow us to become powerful enough to destroy the planet; there's no scientific consensus on global warming; we know the world is going to end anyway, one way or another. This last argument is perhaps one of the most-cited in evangelical circles, but it's also, ironically, the argument that is most easily refuted theologically.

Evangelical Christianity, with its tendency to think of the Bible as a book that dropped complete and ready-made from heaven (rather like the Koran, or the Book of Mormon), generally prefers to overlook the controversy and discussion involved in the formation of the Biblical canon. But it is this very process of debate, and the belief that God leads through conversation and community (more often than through direct and immediate revelation) that lies at the foundation of a truly Christian understanding of Scripture. I bring this up, not to debate the authority of Scripture, but simply to point out the historical fact that the book of Revelation was one of the most hotly debated and controversial books of the Bible, both before and after its canonization. It was debated for the simple reason that we don't entirely understand it. The fathers of the church never claimed to fully understand it, which is why many of them argued that it wasn't really profitable to read. They didn't consider it a useful book for teaching Christians how they ought to live. And yet today, there are many who freely waste their children's future based on a mistaken understanding of the prophecies of Revelation.

I say mistaken because, even assuming a literal interpretation of everything in Revelation (which is a stretch for me as an English major, since so much of it is clearly symbolic), there's simply no basis in the Bible for a belief that we can waste the earth. There's no support in Revelation for the idea that the earth is unimportant or destined for destruction. For the climax of Revelation speaks not of the destruction of the earth but of its renewal:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth...I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God...and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them." - Rev. 21:1-4

Yes, it's a new earth: a renewable earth, if you will. But at the end of all things, in the climax of this story, it's on earth and not in heaven where God chooses to live. The end of the story is not about people getting into heaven, but about God coming to earth. Yes, the old order passes away, but the new order comes in the same place, and is even, in some mysterious way, the same creation. Revelation, like all the Scriptures, places a high value on the world. It doesn't tell us everything about the future; it doesn't reveal to us clearly what will happen at the end of all things. But it does tell us very clearly what God's dream is for the world, and that dream is of a renewed earth, a restored Eden, a place not that humans can escape from to go somewhere better, but a place where he can come and live in the midst of humanity.

And so, I can't consider it Christian to look forward to the destruction of the world. As a Christian, I can't resist a shudder when I think about the doomsday clock. For the Judgment Day of God is not truly a doomsday. It's a day of renewal and not destruction, a day of restoration and re-creation. It is restoration, not judgment, that God looks forward to. Should we be any different?