The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 46 - Threads of Redemption: Christ's Role in a Cosmic Future
As we traverse the mysteries of the cosmos and the divine, our latest conversation unveils the transformative Christian belief in a universe interwoven with eternity. Through the lens of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, we delve into the monumental implications for both the physical realm and our ultimate fate.
The episode paints a vivid narrative of heaven's descent to Earth, where the planet becomes the eternal home of the divine, highlighting our potential for a glorified existence within a cosmos brimming with redemption.
We anticipate the emergence of an all-encompassing creation, a mosaic of every culture and nation, flourishing within God's everlasting kingdom.
Our dialogue also navigates the complex dance between Christianity, scientific discovery, and the blossoming of civilization.
We share insights on cultivating a culture that embraces inquiry, nurtures the growth of knowledge, and where the church actively supports the progress of both science and society. Embark on this journey with us as we craft a vision of a future informed by the compelling truths of the gospel and a steadfast optimism rooted in a deep-seated faith.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome back to the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization. We're on the fourth of our big principles, of a Christian doctrine of creation, and this one. In a way I've already strayed into lots of the meat from this principle because I got sort of carried away in points in earlier principles. But the fourth point is this that the infinite God became flesh and lived among us. He rose from the dead to claim this life as his own for all eternity. He will return from the highest heaven, not to destroy Earth or the physical universe in general, but to make it his home forever and ever. So the direction of travel in history and the universe is not Earth going up to heaven, but heaven coming down to Earth. And Earth is, in this very deep sense, the center of the universe, and physical human life is the destiny of all things, of even the living God. So we began by appreciating the radically positive view of the physical world that is given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we come to this conclusion we need to allow the full weight of that truth to sink in. The truth in Jesus not only tells us that long ago God created the world and declared that it is good, but much more than that, or more than that anyway. This eternal, glorious, free God became flesh and made his home among us. The eternal Son became one of us. The Creator became a creature. As the fourth century theologians would say it deliberately to be provocative. This means not only that the physical world is worth studying because it's real, reliable, rational, and not just that it's good and that everything wrong with it is an intruder, but that the living God has also engaged with this physical world in a complete and never-ending way. And, as we pointed out in our last episode, this living God, the divine emperor who rules over everything, from his appointed by his father, anointed by the Spirit to do this, he experiences the heavens and the earth with human eyes, human ears, human taste, human touch and human smell. He observes with the same basic bodily senses that we observe Now. I say basic because he is the natural form of human being, the human being as it was always designed to be, when it is reached its initial potential, not total potential, like he may be the total potential. But I think it's important to remember that there's human beings as we were created in Eden. That's the original design sort of form, but not necessarily its final form and even when we are resurrected in the new creation, at the return of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Some people say well then we will be at maximum potential. I don't know about that. Like we will certainly be at the starting point to reach our maximum potential, like what is the full potential of resurrected, glorified humanity led by Christ into a new creation where you've got all the galaxies in this almost infinite universe, with the heavens and the earth united together in this one thing that they were supposed to be? What is the ceiling of human potential in that environment led by such a man? Well, even John in his epistles, just like, says oh well, we don't know that. That I don't know, but we do know that when we see him we'll be like him. And then after that, where things go, we don't know.
Speaker 1:But nevertheless, I think it is important to say that the divine emperor observes or interacts with the universe with the same basic bodily senses that human beings do, even as extended, heightened as they must be, given that he is the divine man filled with the spirit, without measure, and so on. Nevertheless, he is a human being and he set up the universe to be ruled over by human beings and he thinks. And that's not because just because he thinks very highly of us human beings, but because human life would be his own life for all eternity. And Psalm 8 gets very into that the idea that the destiny of human beings is seen in Jesus. He is the true revelation of the nature and destiny of human beings and he not only lived our mortal human life and suffered the horror of a God forsaken human death, but then on the third day he rose to immortal human life. He was the first human being to genuinely pass through death into a new kind of physical human life that lies beyond death and decay. So he's the first human being to genuinely escape from the unnatural intruders of death and decay. He's pushed out the intruders of death and decay from his own physical body and now lives as the true natural form of humanity, which is free from death, which is immortal, which should never taste death.
Speaker 1:It's we can say this that there is one human sized bit of the entire universe, the whole heavens and the earth, which has already Arrived in the future, is already living fully the life of the future, the life of the new creation, and then that one small, like human sized portion of the universe will pull through the entire rest of the cosmos, through, and he has. He has promised to extend his Resurrection life to the whole creation. He will return To his home. See, he's away from home at the moment. He's in the highest heaven, reigning Over the heavens and the earth, for and he's a working away, he's working away from home, he's commuted to work away from home in order to get to the, you know, the control room of the universe and run all things on behalf of his home, on behalf of Earth, it church on earth.
Speaker 1:Really, he's away, for he's working away from home, but he will return to his home on earth To live here with his people forever and ever, and the father will come to and dwell among us here, and when he returns, his first action Will be to renew all things, to unite heaven and earth, to redeem and perfect the animals, the mountains, the oceans, the sun, moon and stars, and human society in all its Diversity and richness. And I love all that language in revelation about every language, every culture, every people, every nation, all of it redeemed, renewed, established, ready for this development that will go on into the new creation for forever and ever, the never-ending story that humanity will then begin. So all of this means that we don't only look at the physical world as it is right now, but we know that this physical world will be the never-ending home of righteousness, the corruption will be purged away and All will become just as the father dreamed it could be. And this is why, as we thought, the Christians are so keen to apply the fruits of Civilization, science, technology to make improvements and developments. Human history shows Christians have been the pioneers of new Scientific understanding, new technological developments and bigger ways of Conceiving the universe. To push back the boundaries of thought about the universe. To that there's. This tendency, particularly nowadays, is to for everyone's vision to become ever so tiny, tiny, shrunk and down to like in the Bible that were warned not to be like the creeping Little, like woodlice creatures that are absolutely fixated on the ground immediately in front of them. No, we are not to be like that. We are to raise our heads up to gaze at the heavens and to allow our hearts and minds to Soar to the highest heaven. And there's that about Christian culture and civilization that lifts up the mind and the heart and the imagination to have a bigger view, bigger ways of conceiving the universe. And In the it's funny just Last week I saw like a video that said that Christians oh, I think it might have been Was either Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, and video saying that it was.
Speaker 1:They were annoyed at Christians, at celebrating progress, because they said Christians have uniformly been opposed to new ideas and progress. And it was just, you know, amazing that they could say that, because In the video at least nobody challenged that and it's like wow, the you know, you couldn't, you could not have got a more opposite view of history and development and than that. No, christians have always been at the cutting edge of new horizons of truth, always. And If we're ever pushed into a cultural role of Saying we're not happy about something like a, something that's coming in and and we're, but it's. If Christians do that, it's because they're anxious about some, some new thing being regressive, dragging us back.
Speaker 1:Christians are never upset about moving genuinely forward and improving bigger and better, genuinely, bigger and better views of the universe and bigger and better ways of living human life to its capacity. But what? But we we're in the modern age where there's so many new things that are there are really Toxic, really hostile, and we point that out. Then people are you and you never like anything that's new and it's like whoa, hang on, we are the innovators of world history. We, that's us, but we not. Everything that's new is good and and we've already thought about that, some things that claim to be progress are actually regress and, in fact, sometimes the things which are utterly destructive.
Speaker 1:But nevertheless, christians, then, at the cutting edge of new horizons of truth, and always that will it, that that desire, because we know that the future is going to be even bigger than we can yet conceive or imagine. So now, with this, this is that pulls us forwards, upwards, outwards, to, we know, no, no vision of the, of the potential of the heavens and the earth. Nothing we can currently imagine is big enough. So we're never Reluctant to have a big view, if anything, we're always frustrated that the views are not big enough. We know that everything must change in the end, all things must be renewed, and that is why our Christians conservative, or are they Progressive, to use these modern labels? Well, there are some things, obviously, about us that are conservative, because we conserve the tradition that's been handed on to us, this tradition of truth that is the engine of Civilization.
Speaker 1:This you know the Bible, the creeds, the, the traditions of Christian culture and church life that go back for hundreds, thousands of years. We can serve that because it's something that we, that is so precious that everything depends on the conservation of that. It's like is it worth conserving the earth? And everyone now seems to be very anxious to say, oh, we have to conserve the earth, like it's incredibly important to protect the earth and let's be environmentally Healthy and and and careful because the earth has to be conserved. Yeah, like that's right, exactly, and in exactly that way.
Speaker 1:The Christian tradition, all resting on the Bible, creed, tradition, all of that that we can serve because it is the earth to us, it is, it is, it is the, the very possibility of progress. But, you see, be that very thing that we can serve the Bible, they and, and our theology, the reality of Jesus, all of that, our worship of Jesus, that we can serve. And that is why we are so progressive, why we are radical, why we turn down Things that get in the way of human life. There's something about, like we've seen, that Christians are the ones that Bring to an end empires of evil and oppose things that are Wrong and evil or dehumanizing. So Christians are people who.
Speaker 1:We know the entire universe is going to change, everything's going to be renewed. So right now we are easily able to embrace change and renewal. We love it as long as it is genuinely kingdom of Christ renewal. So the kind of renewal or change that people often recommend, we sometimes are like well, we like change, we know everything must be renewed. But the kind of change that sometimes people recommend, we oppose that because we say no, that is not making things closer to its resurrection future, that's dragging it further into death and decay. Let's have real change, let's have bigger, better change. So we know that right now we see only through a dark mirror. But one day we will know fully and therefore we can handle great change and we are ready to change our minds, and that's hugely important. Christian culture has that open-mindedness to say look, there are certain things we know to be true, but those truths enable us to have this willingness to change. That's right at the heart of the Christian gospel and it fills our hope.
Speaker 1:So, under the rule of Christ, through his church, hospitals have grown up all over the world. The scientific study of the human body could only happen through Christ's powerful vision of the human body. And we know, as we've said, the Almighty, glorious God has a human body, just like us ours. So we care a great deal about the human body and we want change that helps the human body, but we oppose things that diminish or undermine or belittle or harm the human body. So under the rule of Christ, then, as we've seen, scientific bodies have been established, scientific education has been promoted.
Speaker 1:A day of judgment and truth is coming, the day on which the Lord Jesus Christ will be revealed and we will see so much more clearly how all beauty, truth, goodness, life holds together in him, flows out from the Father through the Son, by the Spirit. We'll see all that and we rest in the confidence of that day. We know there is a day coming when everything will be put right. So now we do pursue justice, but we also know that can only ever be of a provisional character. But we do not concede defeat to injustice and evil, because the day of justice is almost upon us, and so we have this crazy confidence in the victory of goodness and justice and truth and beauty and goodness. So we don't strive in the wrong way to be vindicated right here and now.
Speaker 1:Vengeance's mind says the Lord, I will repay and therefore we leave room for God's justice. There's this sense that sometimes people I talk to and I like it in a way, they have this kind of inability to accept any, any injustice at all in the world and I like, but a bit of me kind of goes wow, that's, that's amazing. But on the other hand, I see how much that kind of attitude can be destructive, also because we are in in this state of the world, as we've thought, where there is sin, there is corruption, and the only total remedy for that is the day of God, the day of justice, and so we push for justice, but we don't. We leave room. We leave room for God's justice, recognizing he knows best how to fix the world, and sometimes, in our like passion and almost a craving to put everything right, we actually can make things much worse. So we look, we have this day of God ahead of us and that has a huge effect upon us. So, yes, I was going to go into more about how science operates.
Speaker 1:But well, both unbelievers and believers can use science, of course, as a tool, and some Christians have tried to use laws and education to silence non-Christians who explore theories and applications of science that seem to go against the deepest principles of Christian truth. So there is this temptation and this is an example, where we'll say we want to put everything right, we want total justice and therefore sometimes Christians have done this to say, well, we think this theory or this innovation or this investigation or this discovery is harmful and therefore we will use human power to silence that or repress it or crush it. So Christians have done this too. It's not only non-Christians that have that wrong craving to put everything right. No, christians have also had an inappropriate or out of balance or too human desire to put everything right here and now.
Speaker 1:But it's not for us to silence the unbelieving world, for example by force, but rather it's better, the better thing. If we want to win the world and really show we're progress and goodness and truth lies, and why the future, why we can be so optimistic about the future and why it's so good to trust Christ as the divine emperor, if we want to win the world, to that it's better. Rather than trying to use force against the world, it's better for us to show how church is the place where science and civilization can truly flourish and grow. We do not fight against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces. So we demolish satanic power by winning arguments and changing minds, by speaking out and living out the truth, the gospel.
Speaker 1:Let us talk of Jesus, live according to his commandments, make much of him, and then, as we do that, we demolish strongholds, and that's how we change the world. So yeah, our children, our Christian children, grow up to have this deep and rich appreciation of science and civilization in all its forms, and they can, in a way, I always feel like Christian children as they grow up and learn science can enjoy more success in scientific thought, as they are attempting to understand the world in harmony with the Lord Jesus who holds it all together. So, confident of the day of God, we press on and push forward with none of the desperation and worldly power that we may be tempted to use, but rather we push on to the civilizational tasks and scientific tasks as acts of worship, knowing that the more we understand, the more we see the glory of Christ, the eternal Word of the Father.