Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that religious teachings focus on bringing divine qualities to our earthly existence rather than just aiming for an afterlife.
N. T. Wright's quote suggests that much of religious scripture emphasizes the importance of creating a heavenly experience on Earth, rather than merely looking forward to an afterlife in heaven. It points to a cultural fixation on death and what comes afterward, diverting attention from the transformative power of spirituality that can manifest in daily life, urging individuals to seek and cultivate a sense of heaven in their current existence.
In practice
During a church sermon to inspire a congregation about living purposefully.
The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven." "The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.
True worship doesn't put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half-hearted, doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry what the person in the next pew is doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.
Most of the things that really matter require faith. How do I know that my wife loves me? How do I know that Mozarts Jupiter Symphony is sublime and beautiful? There are all sorts of things which come at a more lowly level than that - How do I know that two plus two equals four? There are different layers, different types of knowing.
To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.
Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.
I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws.
My days β the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood β have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land β in the land of my sires β I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.
In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 1948) in most solemn form, the dignity of a person is acknowledged to all human beings; and as a consequence there is proclaimed, as a fundamental right, the right of free movement in search for truth and in the attainment of moral good and of justice, and also the right to a dignified life.
Handle even a single leaf of green in such a way that it manifests the body of the Buddha. This in turn allows the Buddha to manifest through the leaf.
Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama -- soap opera with literary trimmings.
Imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree. It is root and boughs. It lives between earth and sky. It lives in the earth and the wind. The imagined tree imperceptibly becomes a cosmological tree, the tree which epitomises a universe, which makes a universe.
You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?' You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.' That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.
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