Hero's Journey

Jan. 21

Read: 1 Thess. 4:13-18

Hero’s Journey

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope…” (v.13)

One of the key defining factors of Christian faith is the resurrection / eternal life of the believer. About this truth it is very possible to be “uninformed” as the scriptures say. This supernatural idea - our resurrection / the return of our spirit and soul into a body - is precisely the difference between sorrow and hope. There are plenty of ancient religions that taught about the immaterial “soul” proceeding on in the after life… but Christianity declares that we will be body + soul + spirit again! Eternal life is not living forever as a “spirit”, it is one day walking, talking, eating, and laughing again. Hinduism may speak of “reincarnation”, but that is living another life on this same broken earth again until you finally “get it right enough” that you can be absorbed into the universe. (This is a simplification, but captures the general idea.) Many of these other religions are built on the DISSOLVING of identity and loss of individuality. Christianity, on the other hand, sees your identity (as a child of God) as something given by God and worth preserving for all eternity!

Death is a part of life. The bodies we live in now are “mortal”. I Corinthians 15:42-44 says this about our bodies and the resurrection: “What (goes in the ground) is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” If we lose sight of this, we will “mourn as those without hope” when we face death. If we don’t embrace this truth, we will cling too tightly to what is “perishable, dishonorable, weak, and fleshly (natural)”. When we realize the nature of this body and the hope of the next, we can endure suffering, face death, and mourn with “hope”.

I think this idea is hard to grasp for the first 40 or so years of your life… the “first half” so to speak. The goodness from God that remains here now, and the gifts that the Lord gives are so exciting at first that the idea of longing for more seems silly. It is in the “second half” of life that we begin to realize that there is more in store… that the good things that God gives to us now are simply an appetizer for the great feast that is to come! Likewise, in the second half of life the difficulties of life and the battle with sin begins to take its toll. It is not that we become discouraged or unappreciative of the gift of life here on earth as it is… but we long for the perfected, final, fused with the spiritual, “new heavens and the new earth” that Jesus the Messiah is ushering in… the “Kingdom of God”. (cf. Rev. 20,21) Some people never mature past the “first half” of life. They cling tightly to the things of this world, pretending that they will never grow old, and trying to ignore or avoid their own mortality. To do this is actually to deny / ignore some of the deepest parts of who you are; for God has “written eternity on man’s heart”. (Ecc. 3:11) This is our own “hero’s journey”: where we are known intimately by God before we are born (cf. Ps.139) and leave the spiritual realm to come here and be born on earth, to live and experience life here so that we are fit and ready to return to the Lord and live the eternal life he has chosen for us as his sons and daughters. Jesus does the exact same thing in the incarnation. It is yer another way we have been and are being made “like Christ”.

My prayer for us as the people of God is that this cosmic, super-natural, somewhat wacky truth - the bodily resurrection and transformation of God’s children - would be TRUE for us. I want it to be true in a deep, pit of the stomach, sort of way… not just as an idea we agree with but a “hope” that we long for. I never want it to make us disconnected or aloof to this precious life we have now… but rather hopeful and excited for “the better days ahead”. This life is our journey, our trial, our preparation for the eternal life that lies ahead for all who are in Christ Jesus. So we do not face grief and suffering like those “natural” beings without hope - we have been brought to life in Christ and live in light of our coming transformation / resurrection. We will rise just like Christ. We will live forever in Christ. Love you guys. - JDP