Jamin Bradley

There’s an old hymn of sorts that sings, “This world is not my home. I’m just passing through.”

While I understand the sentiment of the lyrics, this is the kind of escapist theology the church needs to pull out of. The world actually is our home. We were made out its very dirt because we belong here. We were given the high mission to take care of it because we live here. We were assigned the task of reaching up into heaven where we don’t live, so that we might bring it down to earth where we do live.

Indeed, this world is so much our home that God’s plan is to bring us back to it. Heaven isn’t our final destination in Scripture—a renewed earth is. We live here, go to Heaven when we die, and then come back to earth when God makes all things well.

It sounds like a little thing to call out these old lyrics, but I don’t think it is. When this world is not your home, the environment doesn’t matter, suffering becomes temporary and remains unaddressed, God’s good world is viewed as more of a purgatory of sorts, and our overall impact and drive to change the world declines from a kind of Christian nihilism.

This world is your home. The heavenly world is where angels live. You’ll drop by there for a bit, but in the resurrection you’re coming back here with an earthly/heavenly hybrid of a body to live in an earthly/heavenly home.

Don’t just pass through. Be here with us.