Paul Thomson has traded in sermons and session meetings for a cosmic re-engineering project. After ten years as a Church of Scotland pastor, Paul has left the church in search of a larger parish. Now he spends his days initiating community improvement projects for a nonprofit organization, and on the side, hanging out in coffee shops and pubs, looking for allies in the re-recreation of his beloved Scotland.
Paul is pretty sure he won’t find many allies in reconstructing his corner of the world from within the established church. Years earlier, working as a pastor, he began to sense that Scottish churches were part of the problem. Looking over the city of Edinburgh, viewing all the church spires, he heard a voice saying, “It’s over.” What was “over” was the church era, the time when institutional churches would be of any use in Christ’s redemptive work.
That’s because Paul, like a number of theologians today, sees the scope of Christ’s redemptive work as far more comprehensive than what takes place in church. It’s a significant shift in emphasis to say that Christ’s redemption is not merely focused on saving individuals, nor on creating a people who will enjoy their release from sin, but on releasing all of creation from the dominion of evil so that it can shine in the glory of its creator. In this view, the redemptive work of God is relocated from the doctrine of salvation to the doctrine of creation. Creation has been ruined, and when Christ’s work is complete, creation will be restored. No, not restored but recreated, since the new heavens and new earth will be even better than the original creation.
It’s a larger vision of God’s saving purpose, and so the focus shifts from making things right in the church to making things right in the world. The mission of God is redefined: it is more comprehensive and more earthy. Restoration will take the form of an immersion once again into creation, rooting our lives in our bodily existence, and celebrating our creatureliness. Artists are essential to this restoration, because they can awaken the senses and draw people into a more holistic way of being.
In Paul Thomson’s view, the people of Haggisland, his folksy nickname for his homeland, have been alienated from the land. (Details of his fascinating analysis are in Part 2 of this web log.) Paul appeals to his native Scots to join an “incarnational revolution of saints and their dreams moving into the land.”
“There are tons of colourful ways of doing this,” he declares. “… loads of ways of incarnating Christian community without defaulting to congregations, and loads of ways of transforming the land without defaulting to setting up Christian organisations, and tons of colourful ways of Christian practice that don’t involve knee jerking into colonial style ‘ministries.’… Prayer, worship and teaching [are] already happening around us very differently in people’s lives.”
(More in “Restoring Haggisland – Part 2”)
