Marginal Christianity

1.     Jesus is NOT your “personal Lord and Savior.” He is Lord and Savior but he is not yours. You are his. His mission to reclaim and restore God’s wayward creatures and damaged creation is much bigger than any individual. Better to say that what Jesus is up to is not about us, but we have graciously been included in what he is doing. 2.     You will NOT spend eternity in heaven with God. Heaven is a way station for whatever happens to us after death. Resurrection to a new body and life together with God on the new earth is our eternal destiny (“life after life after death” as N.T. Wright cleverly puts it”). 3.     You will NOT spend eternity as a quasi-angelic choir member strumming harps and singing praise to God. Not that God isn’t worthy of praise but he seems more interested in us doing something else: reigning (Rev.22:5). Or in other words, we will spend eternity doing what humans were created to do – represent ...

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Howard Snyder   Fifteen reasons I don’t expect to go to heaven: 1. Because when Jesus said “I go to prepare a place for you,” he didn’t mention heaven (John 14:2-4). 2. Because the “place” Jesus refers to in John 14 is only dimensionally, not geographically or spatially, distant from earth. 3. Because “the word was made flesh,” not just spirit (John 1:14). 4. Because Jesus physically rose from the dead and made it plain he was no ghost or apparition or mere spirit. 5. Because Jesus did not leave his flesh behind when he ascended to heaven. 6. Because Romans 8:21-23 promises “the redemption of our bodies” when all creation is “set free from its bondage to decay.” 7. Because Peter preached that we are now waiting for Jesus to return “to restore everything, as [God] promised long ago through his holy prophets” (Acts 3:21). 8. Because God intends to fully answer our prayer that his will be done on earth as in heaven. 9. Bec...

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/sex-in-heaven.htm We cannot know what X-in-Heaven is unless we know what X is. We cannot know what sex in Heaven is unless we know what sex is. We cannot know what in Heaven's name sex is unless we know what on earth sex is. But don't we know? Haven't we been thinking about almost nothing else for years and years? What else dominates our fantasies, waking and sleeping, twenty-four nose-to-the-grindstone hours a day? What else fills our TV shows, novels, plays, gossip columns, self-help books, and psychologies but sex? No, we do not think too much about sex; we think hardly at all about sex. Dreaming, fantasizing, feeling, experimenting—yes. But honest, look-it-in-the-face thinking ?—hardly ever. There is no subject in the world about which there is more heat and less light. Therefore I want to begin with four abstract philosophical principles about the nature of sex. They are absolutely n...