Over the past couple of weeks (neigh in actuality about 2 months ish, but weeks makes me appear less like a nerd :-) I have been thinking about judgment, partially in line with my recent blogs on resurrection and those forms of concepts. The gospel, which contrary to popular belief, is not about heaven/hell/afterlife. Rather it is the proclamation that the King has won, Jesus the Messiah is ruler over all. Christians are to bring to the present what will be in the future, meaning that we are to proclaim the gospel of the true King by acting according to his guidelines (this is not the main point I am trying to make so I will touch on it briefly).
We should know how to act today in light of the actual gospel, yet many do not simply because we misunderstand its meaning or we choose to act in our best interests. If we view the gospel in light of what the true meaning should be, then we have looked through the key hole and have seen the world as it should be. Our responsibility then, which has never changed even though it seems to have been forgotten, is to be stewards of creation, all of it. If we begin to look through the key hole and see that the future is not about where you go when you die, but of the judgment that is to come to all based on deeds making what was created to be good, good again, then maybe we would begin to act in a truly human way.
That little morsel is a lot to chew (pause and reflect). What? Everyone is judged, even the Christians? Yes! The term judgment has carried negative connotations for many years. It has become a term to mean "going to hell" or with those kind of overtones, only for the wicked. Paul never uses the term to say that those that are wicked are going to hell and those that are just are going to heaven. Paul says that judgment will come to all, both Jew (those charged with doing YHWH's work) and the Gentile (everyone else).
The other day when I was talking with some friends, we began discussing how many Christians waive their Jesus card in front of the world and say that they do not have to take care of the creation (stewardship). However if they were to think about that future judgment and how their deeds today have an impact on that judgment, then maybe the world would be a different place, with people working together to overcome what has gone wrong with this world (i.e. cancer, poverty, etc.) There is a belief that when we die, if we have that Jesus card, then we can skip the line and get into "heaven" without being judged, yet this is not found anywhere in the Bible or even anywhere in Paul.
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