This dialogic was developed to analyze the claims made by some religious teachers throughout history that violence is justified because the afterlife is more valuable than earthly life. This view is wrong-headed and very destructive, but it is not difficult to derive from exaggerations of some Scripture passages. The whole purpose of dialogical analysis is to uncover the true balances and full meanings of Scriptural teachings, by integrating them and not pulling them out of context.
The teachings on the fleeting, ephemeral and temporal nature of earthly life are easily exaggerated into an attitude of indifference or devaluation of earthly life. This violates the Scriptural teachings that earthly life is of great value, as something created by God and loved by God. It can even lead to religious zealotry and fanaticism in which people may become violent against themselves and others, thinking they will be rewarded in heaven.
One of the reasons this kind of exaggeration occurs is due to the ambiguity in the meaning of "earth" or "world" in the Greek New Testament. The NT literature uses the word "kosmos" (world, cosmos) in two ways:
1) as mankind, the realm of creation that God loves and comes to save;
2) as the fallen world-system or idolatrous/secular/legalistic cultures of this age, which God comes to judge.
Christians are called to separate from the fallen, sinful world cultures, but not to attempt to separate from mankind itself, which is unrealistic and not compassionate. We are to be in the world, but not of the world. And there is certainly no justification for violence against life, which God loves and comes to heal and save.
The Scriptural teachings on heaven and eternal life have a present function -- to help us place our current struggles and sufferings into perspective, and to give us hope. Without perspective, we may tend to place so much emphasis on our work in this present life, that we become arrogant, caught up in our own importance, our own plans, as if they were infallible. James warns against this. In this context, it is healthy for us to remember that our life is but a mist, a vapor.
Without hope, we become discouraged and passive, or else desperate and hedonistic, living only for today. In either case, we could give up completely on planning ahead, or on seeking to make the world a better place for tomorrow. Solomon, the wise but jaded and "postmodern" author of Ecclesiastes, repeats this message over and over: "vanity of vanities; all is vanity."
The hope of heaven, as confirmed by Christ's resurrection, is our strong basis for optimism.
So the teaching on the temporality of earthly life keeps us from arrogance -- as if everything depends on us -- and also from pessimism -- as if nothing we do matters. This dialogic keeps the value of earthly life in a balance between these two extremes.
Regarding violence, we should understand that God's way of doing things is not like the human way (Isaiah 55:8). God's way of defeating evil is not like that of ordinary arrogant, violent men. A good illustration of this is Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares (weeds): a farmer's servants discovered weeds among the wheat seedlings. They asked, "Do you want us to go and pull them up?" But he answered, "No, lest in gathering up the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn." (Matthew 13:24-30). At present we live in a world that is a mixture of wheat and weeds. They are tightly entangled, and if one tried to destroy the weeds, there would be serious "collateral damage." God is just and compassionate, and does not operate in this heavy-handed way. He is also very patient, and he is gradually working out his plan for history, in which good will ultimately triumph over evil. But judgement won't happen immediately, and it certainly is not something we can presume to do in place of God.
God's judgement is also not like human judgements. After Jesus, the "harvest" comes through the spreading of his Gospel: "For God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. ... And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God." (John 3:19-21).
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