Paradox and Tension

Many Christians, especially of the Lutheran stripe, live in a paradox of “now and not yet”. We believe we are saved now, but that salvation has not yet come into its fullness. The spiritual tension that is brought by this paradoxical thinking will only be relieved in the unforeseeable future by either physical death or the visible return of Christ.This tension is very evident in the New Testament. Salvation was an ever-present but future reality. The first Christians carried that paradox very well and did not seek to resolve it. I've often asked myself why that was. What was it that compelled the first Christians to live in this paradox of “now, not yet”? They admitted that they were groaning under such conditions, but they “sucked it up”, as it were. Why were they successful at doing this and many of us Christians today seem to not want to live with that tension.

Here's my guess: The first Christians saw their tension as only temporary, and it will all be resolved within their lifetime. It's very obvious that the New Testament authors felt that they were living in the time of the end, and that “the end” was coming “soon”, that is, within their own generation. It's very apparent that they were waiting for something to happen, and this something they called “the end”. It's easier to live in a “now, not yet” tension if you are confident that “the end” is coming “soon” and “very soon”. If I had a headache today and was very confident that it was going to be gone by tomorrow morning, I can live with that. I'll put up with a headache today and look forward to being pain-free tomorrow. But if I was told that my headache was going to last for an indefinite amount of time unless I popped a couple of Tylenol, then I would start poppin'!

I think we've misunderstood the nature of “the end”. We're waiting for a cataclysmic destruction of the earth and the entire universe and a great big Jesus appearing in the sky surfing on a cloud. But I'm not so sure anymore that this is what is meant when the Bible talks about “the end”. Interestingly, the Bible never talks about the end of the world. It talks about “the end of the age”. Which age? The present age of the New Testament authors, which would then take us back to the first century. Something big was going to happen that marked the end of that age, that generation. I believe that “something big” was the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans, which happened in the year 70. Jesus talked about it. The Apostles pondered it and even looked forward to it. It would be the resolution of the “now, not yet” paradox and its resultant tensions.

Today, our theology says that we must also carry this tension and live in this paradox. But if this tension is of unknown duration for the many generations since the first century, then this tension is no longer healthy. In fact, it's no longer tension. It's bipolar, and it results in hearts that are very sick indeed. People want and need relief from this bipolarity that they suffer as a result of being told to carry the tension that we in our day were never meant to carry. What if we Christians started to proclaim that “the end of the age” had already occured, that the book of Revelation (with its visions of monstrous chaos) is fulfilled in its entirety, and that God is not going to destroy this beautiful and marvelous universe we inhabit?