On Racial Equality and Glorification

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As a pastor I often hear people refer to the folks they can’t wait to see again in heaven. Sometimes this is simply a vague reference to a loved one who has passed away—looking forward to being greeted by a friendly face when they too pass over to the other side—other times it is a very clear idea that their loved ones are looking down on them from heaven, waiting eagerly for their arrival.

In what I’m about to say, I hope it’s clear that there’s nothing wrong with this. I am looking forward to seeing all kinds of friends and family on that day, too.

It’s just this: I can never remember a single time in all my years as a pastor when someone has said, I can’t wait until we get to heaven and I’ll get to sit down with people from all kinds of races and cultures that I’ve never known, and finally be reconciled with black people, and white people, and brown people, and Native American people, and Russian people,  and Chinese people, without any of the racial barriers that currently divide us.  Or even less theologically: I can’t wait till heaven, when there won’t be racism any more.

I’m speaking somewhat hyperbolically. Certainly, I’ve known missionaries who have faithfully traveled to the ends of the earth and back to tell people of every nation, tribe and tongue about Jesus, and that’s got to be an expression, in some way, of this desire for racial reconciliation. (Although it’s not this by default. Lots of terrible acts of racism have been perpetrated in the name of “missionary zeal,” too.)

But either way, my point still stands. We are, on the whole, far more interested in being reunited with our own “kind” of people in Heaven, than we are in being reconciled to “other kinds” of people.

And if I’m on to something here, let me say that this is, I think, a profound failure of the Christian imagination. Because the Scriptures say far, far more about the racial reconciliation that will happen in the New Heaven and the New Earth, than it ever does about our personal family reunions.

At least: I can’t remember a single saying of Jesus where he speaks about my Grandma or Grandpa waiting in heaven to hug me with open arms.  I can’t remember any parable he told where my dearly-departed best friend will welcome me in with a holy high five. Though again, I’m not saying this won’t happen, or that there’s anything wrong with wanting it. I’m just saying that that did not seem to be Jesus’s primary vision of what we should expect come that day.

Instead, I remember a him saying that “many will come from the east and the west to take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 8:11; and he said this to Jewish people, in response to the faith of a Gentile person). And I remember a parable about a great banquet where many who were called would not come, so the Holy Host brought them in from the roads and the country lanes to fill the house with others (Luke 14:15ff). And I remember St. John the Divine’s vision of heaven itself, where people from every nation, tribe and tongue were gathered together to worship the Lamb (Rev. 7:9-10).

In other words, if the Heaven of the Bible can be thought of in any way as a big family reunion, it is not my personal family that will be reunited, but the whole family of all humanity—a glorious reconciliation of the races, where all are brought together in Christ as “one new humanity” (Eph 2:14-15).

This unity, though, does not nullify the ethnic differences that make each one distinct, rather it celebrates and sanctifies them all as God’s gift to his people. After all: didn’t God declare all the creatures in the sheet to be clean, in Peter's vision (Acts 10:15)?  And didn’t he forbid Peter from calling any of them impure, whom God himself had sanctified? And didn’t he show Peter that this vision was really about racial reconciliation in the Gospel, by following it up with visitors asking about the Gospel, who were from a racial group that Peter’s people had been taught to despise?

The answer to all these questions is yes.  Because the heart of heaven beats passionately for racial reconciliation—the leaves of the Tree that grows in Heaven, remember, are for the healing of every ethnic group (Rev 22:2)—and the Holy Spirit wants us to labor with him towards that day.

I’m saying all of this because over the last few days, while protests for racial justice rage around the globe, I have been trying to think through racism from a soteriological perspective. Soteriology is the high-falutin’ word for “the Bible’s teaching about salvation, how we are saved and what it means for us.”  It started just with a realization that as a white Christian I have this deep-seeded desire to justify myself when it comes to racial inequalities, rather than seeking to be justified by faith in Christ. After writing about Justification by Faith, I realized you couldn’t stop there, and had to talk about Sanctification, too. After writing that piece, I figured I ought to go all the way with it, and reflect on Glorification as the final jewel in the crown.

Glorification is the theological term we use, sometimes, to talk about the hope of glory that God extends to us in the Gospel. We are not saved for this life only. If that were the case, Paul says, we are to be pitied above all people. Instead, our salvation is a promise of life to come in the New Heavens and New Earth, when Jesus himself comes in glory to judge the living and the dead.

When people talk about meeting their loved ones in Heaven, they are reflecting, whether they realize it or not, on the doctrine of glorification.

The truth is, however, that if we want to be biblical in our doctrine of glorification, we have to wrestle with the fact that one of the things that will make our glory so glorious is just that, on that day, we will finally and fully be reconciled with people from every nation, tribe, and tongue on the planet; and there won’t be a racist among us.

We have to be careful when using the doctrine of glorification to talk about racial justice, however. It can very easily slip into “pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die” kind of thinking. What does it matter (we might say) if you are oppressed now? When you get to heaven you’ll get your reward, so just suck it up and suffer through….

That abuse of the doctrine of glorification has been used, actually, to justify racism in the past, to keep the oppressed oppressed and the oppressors oppressing; and if it sounds like I’m saying that then I have failed in this post.

Because there is a different way of applying the doctrine of glorification.  In this different way, a Christian looks deeply into the Scriptures to see what Heaven is really like. What is God’s vision for the sinless relationship with him, in harmony with others, and at peace with the world, that he wants us to enjoy in eternity? What is he moving this crazy thing called the History of Planet Earth towards? What will life in the New Creation be like?

You grasp hold of that vision.  And then you set to work—in your limited capacity and with the Holy Spirit working through you the whole way—you set to work—by prayer and petition with praise and thanksgiving—you set to work trying to “live into” that glory now. You live into it, (so to speak) so that when it finally dawns in All its Glory, you’ll be ready for it, because you’ll have been practicing for it all along.

When we apply the doctrine of glorification in this way, we discover not only the motive, but also the means by which to resist racism. Because you will not be a racist in Heaven. No evil thing is allowed into the Heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:27), so any racist sin that’s still lurking in my heart come that day will have to be laid aside—covered by the blood of the cross for good—before I ever pass through those gates.

How much better if we allowed the glory of the Lord to get to work on us here, and now, instead? How much better if we asked him to heal that sin now, instead, so that when we do at last make it to Glory, we will be good and ready to take our place in that heavenly choir which is (according to St. John the Divine, it is) made up of singers from every nation, tribe, tongue and culture, people, ethnicity, and race under heaven.

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