Heaven to Earth

Rob Bell writes in his book Velvet Elvis, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.” Despite the automatic critique I want to give that statement, it convicts me. The gospel is good news. It convicts me because I think of all the times we’ve made the gospel bad news. Not only that, but it convicts me to ask if I’ve made the gospel good news for the people around me simply through the way I live life. This also leads me to ask the seemingly simply question of…What is the gospel? And it’s here where my thoughts go everywhere.

The first thought I have is a question that was posed last semester by Rev. Paul Gordan-Chandlier. I don’t remember the direct quote, but the way I translated it in my head was, “Do you worship the Christ of the gospels or the Christ of the West?” Do I follow the gospel of the Bible of the gospel of the West? I suppose I opened my eyes then to how closely associated the words “Christian” and “America” are in Islamic culture. This is confusing to me because Christianity started, after all, in the Middle East. Jesus was a part of Middle-Eastern culture. So why does the gospel appear to be so foreign there? Have we made it into something it’s not?

Another thought/question I have pertains to the purpose of the gospel. I grew up in Sunday School and I attend a Bible College. This means I can tell you about the “Roman Road.” But what I question is whether or not the primary purpose was to get us to heaven…or to get heaven to us. Both? My pastor is currently preaching a series called “Heaven to Earth.” I like it. Growing up I always heard that the gospel is what gets you into heaven. True. But that was all we focused on. I think Jesus came to earth for something more than to just secure us with eternal life. He brought…life. Period. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” If heaven in a future tense was all that mattered, why would Jesus spend so much time healing the sick and loving the unloved? Maybe the gospel is not just to take away the fear of dying, but to take away the fear of living.

The gospel is good news for the whole world. It should be good news because it should bring heaven to the hells of earth.