Prosperity: The Mission of God

The mission of God is not to get people saved. Now that I likely have your attention, let me also acknowledge that getting people saved is an essential piece of God's present work in the world. However, we must view God's mission from God's vantage point rather than ours. Failure to do so inevitably results in making it all about us.

The mission of God in the world is to establish and sustain a shalom-filled world overflowing in relationship with him. It is a world where his image is reflected through his eikons to the rest of the created order, to each other, and back to God. It is a world where his eikons exercise co-creative dominion over the created order and bring all things to their fullest existence.

As we look at humanity in this mission, we can see that we were created for relationship with God. But we must ask a critical question of the biblical narrative: Why did God create material beings for such a relationship? God could have created non-material beings for relationships. Indeed, the widely held belief across much of Christianity today is that when we die, we will enter into an eternal non-material existence.

I believe the answers are there in the first two chapters of Genesis. God creates, and it is good! But it is also incomplete. First, God creates the first human couple and makes them co-regents with him over the earth. Then he instructs them to "fill the earth." Why? So that the whole earth may be filled with his image; so that the ongoing work of creation and bringing the world to its fullness may be pursued.

Here we need to make a critical observation about human action. Darrell Cosden stresses that for humanity, the created order is both our home and the object of our work. We are material beings made for a material world. We are organically intertwined in the biological and material realities of the created order, but we also have a mandate to "work" the created order into a higher vision. Understood this way, our "working" of the created order includes human culture and governance because we are part of the created order. We are "other" from creation. Thus, romantic naturalism violates God's creation mandate, but so is trashing the environs we were given as our home.

We are to convert matter, energy, and information from less useful forms to more useful forms … from lesser configurations to higher configurations …, where "useful" and "higher" is thoroughly shaped by shalom. Converting matter, energy, and information … and then distribution of the product of these conversions … is essentially economics.

The very word "economics" has strong linkage to the biblical context. The word originates in the Greek oikonomos, meaning "household manager." The oikonomos was the most trusted servant within the Greco-Roman household of Jesus' day. The household was every bit as much a business as a dwelling. The archetype master of the household was seen to be above daily affairs and frequently absent from the household. The oikonomos was responsible for seeing that the household was both protected and productive. Jesus uses oikonomos as a metaphor for our labors on his behalf, and it serves as a striking metaphor for the human commission given in the first two chapters of Genesis.

Chapter three of Genesis and succeeding chapters relate the consequences of human rebellion against God's shalom. Economic questions are central to the consequences. Those consequences include the refusal of the ground to yield its produce and the corruption of human relationships into greed, dishonesty, oppression, and murder. Efforts at human dominion were deeply corrupted.

The ninth chapter of Genesis records God's reiteration to Noah of the command he gave Adam and Eve to "fill the earth." Chapter eleven records God's scattering of the people at Babel across the earth in response to their explicit refusal to be scattered. Chapter twelve begins the saga of a people through whom all nations will be blessed, and the curse reversed. The Old Testament records God's efforts to use Israel as light to all nations, drawing all people to himself. The New Testament tells us of Jesus' instruction to take his redeeming message and power to "the ends of the earth" so that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The new creation will be consummated into a shalom-filled created order wherein God's eikons are redeemed and restored to their co-regent status as they "fill the earth" with his image.

It is my conviction that new creation is exactly that … a creation … not an ethereal non-material existence. That is not to say that the present creation is utterly continuous with what is to come, but neither is it utterly discontinuous. The imagery of 1 Thessalonians 4 is of Christ (figuratively) coming to the clouds above the earth, the dead rising to meet him, followed by the living, and then the great throng ushering him into his kingdom on the earth. The image of Revelation is of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven to the earth. In some sense, what we are doing in this world carries over into the new creation, but it is perilous to be too dogmatically specific about what this entails. If the new creation is not in some sense material and some sense a continuation of the present creation, then the language of "redeemed creation" is nonsensical. God doesn't prevail in his stated mission to have shalom in a world filled with his eikons. Furthermore, human ontology (i.e., material beings created for dominion of a material world) becomes an aberrant experiment that must be radically discarded for some alternate state of existence, which is to say that no redemption has genuinely occurred.

Finally, we must be clear about a frequently perpetuated inaccuracy concerning the biblical narrative. The biblical narrative begins with shalom in a garden. Contrary to frequent misrepresentations, the biblical narrative does not end with shalom in a garden. It ends with shalom in a city! Cities were not only places of worship but also symbols of human culture, art, and governance. Thus, the biblical narrative ends with the redemption of … not the obliteration of … the human contribution to the created order. Economic labors are not transitory acts absent of intrinsic value. They contribute to God's ultimate and eternal mission, as presented in the second paragraph of this post. Jesus' ministry is about the total redemption of humanity and the created order, including the redemption of human labor.

So if we see the mission of God from this vantage point, what does it mean for our Christian witness in the world?

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Comments

[Dan Anderson-Little]

Mike,
I really like where you are going with this. It seems to me that the thesis you are putting forward about God's Mission in the world and our place and the material world's place in it, pushes at both traditional conservative and liberal conceptions of God's Mission--where (to greatly oversimplify) the conservative primary value is to "save souls" and the liberal primary value is to "correct the ills of society." Both are important, but both are incomplete. I wonder if a searching dialogue about this between liberals and conservatives might help us with other issues as well...
Keep up the good work!
Dan

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks Dan.

Exodus and exile are two big themes in the OT. Exodus becomes necessary because of oppression from without. Exile occurs because of internal factors where the people of God become rebellious.

Both are destructive to God's mission. I think the biblical narrative is that God requires both justice and holiness. Becoming unduly focused on one leads to shalom destroying consequences from neglect of the other.

What I keep coming back to more and more is just how crucial my eschatology is in shaping how I frame these concerns.

[stushie]

If it's not about saving souls, then why did Jesus die on the Cross?

[Michael W. Kruse]

Penultimately, to make an atonement for sin. Ultimately, to create the reality described in paragraph two. I'd really encourage you to go back and be sure you've understood what I've said.

Personal salvation is a means to an end not the end itself. We aren't merely saved from something. We are saved to someone for a mission. We are to become individual and corporate image bearers of God and we are to calling people to repentance and to community.

By analogy, what is the mission of physician? Is it to make diagnoses, give prescriptions, and do operations? No. These are means. Achieving the health and wholeness of the patient is the mission?

To reduce the mission of God to salvation is to become focused on piece of the picture that is all about us. The mission of God is the broader vision of the shalom-filled world I gave in paragraph two and personal salvation is an essential but penultimate piece of that mission.

[Ted M. Gossard]

Michael, I mention this post and your series on my blog today. Great work, brother. Keep it up, whether we always agree or not. Your thoughts are getting through to me over time.

[Ted M. Gossard]

Woops. The link: http://communityofjesus.blogspot.com/2008/08/changing-my-views.html

[Ted M. Gossard]

the link.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks for the comments and encouragement.

I'm working this stuff out in my own life and expect I will be until I die. What I'm articulating in these early posts is my articulation of the grand eschatological vision. However, how God gets to that vision and our understanding of our role can differ greatly. Thus, agreement on the grand vision still leaves us with considerable room for debate and disagreement on the specifics (i.e., political, ecclesiastical, etc.)

Thanks again for your affirmation and the links at your blog!

[Viola Larson]

Michael,
Thank you for this series. I just read it all tonight. This may sound silly, but what you are writing about helps me to acknowledge that painting my guest bedroom, making my husbands favorite peanut butter cookies, speaking up at Presbytery and writing about Jesus' death on the cross are all worthy actions in following Christ.

[Michael W. Kruse]

I'm glad it has that impact on you as well. I keep writing about this stuff because of how quickly I forget the importance of the day-to-day things.