An overarching theme in the Bible is the four-fold Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation. Though we often acknowledge this when we hear it, I wonder how often we consider it in our daily lives. It seems to me that three of the pieces are usually neglected: Creation, Fall, and Consummation. I do not present a full argument here, but just some snippets to get you thinking.
Creation
In the past who knows how many years, the notion of a God creating the entire universe has been thoroughly mocked and ridiculed from several angles, most notably from the scientific establishment. As a result, I believe a lot of pastors, and their parishioners, shy away from discussion on creation. While I do not advocate that Christians become hard core Intelligent Design proponents, they do need to understand that if God did not in fact create the universe, then the rest of their faith is worthless. If God did not create it all, then we should worship whoever/whatever did (similar to how many atheists worship at the altar of evolution).
Fall
The fall of mankind is also a foreign concept to a lot of Christians, theologically and practically. Theologically the general consensus is that people are good and that society (and/or something else like religion) makes them go bad. This is quite contrary to the clear teaching of scripture. But even if we intellectually assent to the depravity of mankind, our actions tend to say otherwise. We attribute bad things to God, chance, or others. We attribute good things to ourselves like somehow we actually deserve them because we are such good people. We often subtly infer that our holiness achieves merit before God, forgetting that even our best works are like filthy rags.
Some think the fall only affected pieces of us as opposed to the whole. Just the body (evidenced by disease) and the soul (because we need a savior right?), but not the mind (because we all know that we each have Vulcan logic and are always right).
But one of the main issues that people do not like preaching about our fallenness is that it makes people unhappy thinking that they are so bad and nasty. The goal of Christianity is to be happy, right? Wrong.
Consummation
We do not often discuss consummation in the redemptive plan because it involves several topics that our modern minds do not want to deal with.
Kingdom: The consummation is of God’s eternal Kingdom. As such, there is a call for us to be servants in that Kingdom. We associate this servanthood with slavery, totally neglecting the fact that Christ came as s servant to us and told us to do likewise. This involves sacrificing our desires for those of the King. This is not something we want to do, as we spend the majority of our lives trying to build our own kingdoms.
Heaven: Christians have a misconception of what heaven is based on plenty of movies, media, books, and other venues other than scripture itself, not to mention the widespread heritical belief in some sort of Christian reincarnation. Plenty of Health/Wealth teachers out there certainly teach that you can have your best life now, and society (with its glitz, glamour, and toys) does not want us to think or yearn for heaven. Once you talk about heaven, you need to talk about…
Hell: A very uncomforatble subject especially when you are subtlely mocked with the question “Do you really mean that (their personally significant person) is going to hell?” Actually, yes, I do mean that and I wish it was some other way. The Bible speaks of a literal, conscious, eternal torment called hell. Of course, if you skip the Fall, then you don’t need a hell, but then you don’t need the item talked about the most:
Redemption
Redemption gets a lot of press, and rightfully so because of the unfathomable grace of God shown towards believers in Christ. But if there was no fall, we would not need a redeemer. If there was a fall and we could save ourselves, then we would have personal redemption. If we are redeemed then left on our own, then there may not be a need for a consummation. We often neglect what we are truly being saved from, and what we are being saved to.
Well, those are some thoughts.
