It’s not our buddying up with empire under Constantine.

It’s not our acceptance of the myth of redemptive violence, launching the Crusades and countless other imperialistic wars of conquest.

It’s not our long history of patriarchy and subsequent subordination of women. 

It’s not our silence during and even defense of slavery.

It’s not our split from Rome and the countless factions that now exist.

It’s not the millions upon millions of ethical blunders sinful men and women have made while representing Christ’s Church. 

It’s not our constant and seemingly eternal infighting while orphans and widows around us starve and perish.

It’s not even Mark Driscoll.

Nope. It’s not any of that.   Christianity’s biggest mistake can be summed up on a billboard I saw while driving to Nashville this week:

Our biggest mistake is turning the Kingdom of God which Jesus announced as here into one more tool to comfort us in the midst of our mortality.   Our biggest mistake is turning the Gospel into knowledge that if possessed and accepted unlocks the holy grail of eternal life.  We will live in mansions and walk streets of gold beside crystal seas, or, if you were born in another part of the world, wake up next to 70 virgins (let’s save the debate over whose heaven is better for another time, ok?)  

Life is short, Eternity isn’t, isn’t the point!   Implied in this message, which sums up the evangelical gospel of the last century, is that the most important thing to consider when making decisions in this fleeting appendage of a thing we call “life” is how will this or that impact my destination after death?  

This is so contrary to the way of Jesus, who turns that question on it’s head and asks instead, “How will this decision affect the neighbor around me?” 

Yet another dangerous implication in this biggest mistake of ours is that the justice of God is such that actions, good or bad, done in a “short” amount of time render an “eternal” consequence or reward.   God, we are told, holds an infinite grudge.

Now, in seminary I read the many theologians who have an answer to this problem.    Our sins are committed, they say, against a holy and infinite God and therefore require an infinite response if God’s sense of justice and honor are to be met.    We, being human, could not and would never be able to satisfy that need of God (God is “needy”?) and so God sent God’s Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty we could and would not be able to pay.   Because Christ was duly punished, tortured, and executd, God is “satisfied.”   His anger towards us is softened, and now, we sinful humans can just hide  behind Jesus’ blood and all will be well for us when we die.   Those who do not hide behind Jesus, however, are subject to God’s wrath (which is eternal) and by default, subject to our (Christians) wrath, as well.  

And since God still hates those who are not clothed in Christ, it is only natural that all the things I listed at the outset of this post happened, and continue to happen.    We annoucne the Kingdom of God is at hand not by embracing everyone as already a beloved child of God – as our neighbor – but by shock and awe.   We drop bombs of both word and steel under the guise of eternal significance.   Something of such weighty importance (eternity) deserves and requires such weighty tactics.  

I am more and more convinced as of late that our biggest mistake as Christians is that we have put so much weight on eternity that we miss the life in front of us.   We are so heavenly minded, as the saying goes, that we are no earthly good.   

Why do we do this?  Why do we love to place so much emphasis on the wrath of God, which is, we claim, eternal?   Why is God’s wrath forever but God’s love finite?    Why does God stop loving us after this “short life” and cease to stop searching for and reconciling us?  

What would the Body of Christ (the church) look like today if we embraced the good news that God loves us – ALL of us – and that eternity is in God’s hands, not ours?   What if we trusted that God is good and so too, is life?    What if we changed that billboard to read instead,

Life is short, live it.   ~ God.