Back to this week’s theme. As sin-wrecked shalom pools around me in many stories, from the global — oil creeping its way toward our white sands, to the personal — a soul-shredding tone creeping into my voice in moments of stress — I am reminded again by Bierma, of the marvel of restored shalom. My emphasis.
“The marvel of the new earth, promised in Isaiah and 2 Peter and Revelation, is this: God is not giving up. The heavens and earth, soiled as they have been by sin, are not a failure, not a wreck, not irretrievable. The shalom – the heavenly wholeness, the right alignment of everything – is not beyond recovery. God, it turns out, has a holy stubbornness, a refusal to accept ruin.
Christianity is the only religion in which God reaches down to human beings and stoops to our level. Other religions worship a god whom humans must continually try to please, try to impress, try to elevate themselves to earn his favor and approach his level. God is the only god in all of human religion who lowers himself, as a way of exalting himself. (56)
“Shalom’s repair is achieved by reversing the process, with the improbable demotion when God becomes human.” (56)
“Nature itself will be free from sin. Not just souls, but also soil. Not just people, but the theater in which God performs for them and reveals himself to them.”
Nathan Bierma, Bringing Heaven down to Earth
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