Binge watching the latest Netflix series. Youtube rabbit holes. The non-stop scrollability of social media. Even more old-fashioned means such as going to the movies, reading books, and workaholism still get a lot of traction.
There is no shortage of escape hatches to help you forget about reality and all its troubles. And there’s no shortage of someone trying to make a buck off of helpuing you check out.
And that includes religion.
A deity who helps us disconnect from the hum-drum grind and slow-but-steady suffering of reality is quite attractive. It’s quite tempting to believe in a deity whose end game is rescuing the faithful out of this world, and out of their bodies, so that he can burn it all to the ground.
This, too, is quite literally big business.
But this is not the deity of the Bible. Quite the opposite. Jesus, the Son of God who put on flesh and blood, prayed not that his Father would take the faithful out of the world, but that he would protect them from the evil one who rules the world. Jesus was not made of the same stuff as this world, and therefore neither are his followers whom he has remade.
Rather than escapism, his goal is sanctification—setting his people apart for a special purpose in the world. Rather than a saving from, Jesus envisioned a saving for. The world doesn’t need a bunch of little christs eager to unplug and disappear, but rather those who are humbly engaged with the same love and patience and power as Jesus.
Put on your flesh and blood just as he did. Don’t despise your own body. And don’t hate the world you live in. Walk out into it and be present to it.
