Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?

I can be a very nostalgic person. Curiously, I am more often nostalgic for time periods in which I never actually lived, rather than for any previous portion of my own life. I don't really know what that says about me, but there you have it. So when I read Franny and Zooey by Salinger, I want to live in New York City in the 1950s. And when I read The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, I long to be a part of the upper-class in the 1920s (before the stock market crash, naturally). And when I read The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy, well... I just want to be as talented as Walker Percy.

In contrast, I do not often think, Man, I wish I could go back to that time in middle school when I only ever wore sweatpants and I hadn't yet discovered the positive benefits of deodorant and facewash. Or any other time of my life, for that matter. So perhaps my personality skews me away from the wishing-for-how-things-used-to-be mentality that I have found is startlingly present in the church.

You have probably experienced this at least once. You are talking to someone one day after church, and they say something about how bad the world/country/city/rural-nowhere-landscape has become since they were a kid. And you can tell by the tone of their voice that they obviously wish things would return to the utopian society they once enjoyed; an apparently mystical land that brought nothing but smiles and goodwill to each person inhabiting it. I have heard that the 1950s in America, for example, were much "better" than today. Which always makes me raise my eyebrows. I am hard-pressed to find a political figure in recent history that broke more social, legal, and political norms than JFK. When I first read a biography that detailed his excessive womanizing, I could barely believe it. What was worse, I realized that such infidelity was, quite frankly, the norm in that period of American history. The difference between then and now simply is that we didn't talk about it then, and now it is blasted all over the Internet whenever any political candidate so much as sneezes in the direction of one of his female aides. Not to mention how much money was spent by the Kennedy family to secure JFK's numerous elections to public office. Even worse (far worse), outside of the US, Joseph Stalin was torturing and murdering untold millions and Mao Zedong was instituting the Great Leap Forward--or as I like to call it, the time when Mao Zedong starved 60 million peasants to death. Man, those were the good old days, weren't they? Don't you just wish you could go back to the time when everyone thought the world was on the brink of nuclear war on any given day of the week?

This topic most often comes up, unfortunately, when things like the Book of Revelation are being discussed. The common Christian view in America is apparently that things are going to hell-in-a-handbasket (literally, minus the handbasket part) until finally God will show up and start kicking some butt and taking names. Which sounds well and good, except I don't think it's accurate. I am well aware that my interpretation of Revelation and Daniel and other relevant passages in this regard is not in-line with the mainstream opinion, and that really influences my outlook here. Be that as it may, I would like to point out that we are on the side of history that occurs after the Cross (a marvelous fact that Easter reminds us of this week!). According to the biblical authors, Christ began the ball rolling on redemption, and he has commissioned the Church to join him in the kingdom-effort of restoring all things, setting everything right, reconciling everything in the universe back with God (cf. Colossians). That sounds fantastic, doesn't it!? It actually sounds like good news. And so, this time of year, I am reminded of why I am so optimistic about the future. Certainly, the Bible's authors are clear that things will not be perfectly reconciled until Christ returns, and looking around us we surely know that there is a lot of work to be done (a lot of which can only be done by God!), but we are in the home-stretch, relatively speaking! This is the appetizer to the great kingdom feast with God! We are offered the chance to work alongside of him to make his will be realized on earth as it is in heaven, right? And so we do! And things get better. Medical advancements are made, quality of life is increased, our knowledge about the vastness and beauty of the universe expands, our ability to communicate with one another improves every day, our opportunities to express ourselves in forms of art that people couldn't even imagine a mere fifty years ago are developed, it is really quite astounding. It would be a mistake, if you hold a so-called Christian worldview, to think that anything in the above list was achieved simply by the ingenuity of mankind. It wasn't. It was achieved by the Cross. It always has been, and it always will be.

According to the Bible, the Christian's hope is not in the past, it is in the future. It is in God, who has promised to complete the project he began by humbly becoming a human being to suffer the consequences of our sins on a wooden cross nearly 2000 years ago. He has purged the evil that we invited to this universe through our disobedience, and he has offered us the opportunity to join him in the effort. And one day, in the future, redemption will be accomplished. So why not enjoy the ride?