Keep Your Eyes on the Ball!

It’s time to come clean. This Medium publication — my whole project — has an agenda.

You already know the big picture: my hope is to pass along what I’ve learned so far and what I’m still learning about how to be a practical Christian.

But here’s what I’ve not disclosed. In order achieve that goal, I’ve got to persuade you to give up your entrenched position — whatever it is. Do you call yourself a conservative? A liberal? Have you been taught that these are your only mutually-exclusive options?

Over time, my hope is that I’ll persuade you to embrace the political identity described by one of my favorite teachers, theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas taught me that in order to be a practical Christian, one must commit to being neither a conservative nor its opposite, but an eschatological thinker. Or, as my old baseball coach used to remind me, “Keep your eyes on the ball!”

The baseball metaphor can be helpful because labels like conservative, liberal, progressive, and libertarian are distractions. Rather than focusing on commotions in the grandstand or on defensive positions in the field, Paul advises, “Keep your eye on the prize!” (Phil 3:12–14)

What’s the prize?

The first verse of John Lennon’s poem, Imagine, offers a helpful hint: “Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky/Imagine all the people/Living for today…”

How do we imagine the time when God’s purposes are fulfilled? Just as young couples imagine their future with a yet unborn child and are transformed by the vision, keeping your eye on the ball requires imagination. Some things are beyond our grasp, though we can intuit their dawning reality. And, like Lennon, we must resort to poetry even to imagine them.

In spite of what you may have heard, in the Bible, the end of time is not the cessation of creation, nor a great conflagration, but a carrying on of the friendship between God and God’s children, only in a new way. It’s an end not in the sense of conclusion but in the sense of a fulfillment of purpose, a maturation. Like a succulent peach, ready to eat.

How are we to imagine this fulfillment of God’s vision for us? With poetry, of course:

Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look! I’m making all things new (Rev 21:3–5).

As Lennon seemed to understand, at the end of our story, when God’s will for creation is fulfilled, the dividing line between the heavens and earth is no more, for we have learned at last to love the Lord as God’s heaven-based messengers instinctively do: with all our hearts, being, and strength. Because we’ve learned at last to love all that God loves, we’ve knocked down our walls, and “there is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female…” (Gal 3:28). Finally, we are as one with God and each other, as God always called us to be.

“Keep your eyes on the ball.” Lots of folks keep their eyes on the past, looking backward to creation stories to determine how we should live. In contrast, the eschatological thinker keeps her eyes on the future, bringing the poetic vision of the time when God’s purpose is fulfilled into her present, letting it transform her present, by setting her compass towards that destination. Propelled by such hope, she walks.

How should I act? What ought I do? The vision answers: do what you imagine to be consistent with how our story ends, when all feast in friendship with God and each other. Let your politics be neither conservative nor its opposite, but the politics of Jesus, who invites all to the feast and knocks down all our excuses for not showing up. Jesus’ politics? Bringing good news to the poor, liberating the oppressed, offering a new beginning to the lost, and rest for the weary. But, above all, celebrating that God has already given us everything we need to live joyfully and peacefully with God and each other (Luke 4:18–19).

Perhaps this is too grand a vision for you to trust right now. If so, may I suggest you take Lennon’s advice? Stop trying to reason your way to God. That’s a futile exercise. Instead, imagine!

To what would your eyes be opened if you assumed that God’s nature eternally is to make all things new? That Easter is breaking out everywhere, every day? How would we order our affairs so that our communities are like a foretaste of the banquet? What choices would you make if God had called you by name to be a partner in making that feast a reality? Imagine!

Then, in spite of your uncertainty, weave your life into a beacon of light, the concrete evidence for others that God’s grand vision is already coming true (Matt 5:14–16).

If you liked this, click the💚 below so other people will see this here on Medium.