Pie-In-The-Sky?

Marx once wrote:

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness."

Is our faith pie-in-the-sky, 'let-the-world-burn', a simply 'warmth-in-the-heart', a comfy life-after-death religion?

Or is it a kingdom-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven religion?

Jesus didn't leave his body in the tomb and went off to a new, spiritual dimension... He rose from the dead in space-time history, in the present world, in a glorified physical BODY.

The message of the resurrection is that this present world matters, the pains and problems in this present world matter; that the living God has made a decisive bridgehead into this present world with his healing and all conquering love, and that, in the name of this strong love, all the evils.. of the present world must be addressed with the news that healing, justice and love have won the day....

You see, the bodily resurrection of Jesus isn't a take-it-or-leave-it thing, as though some Christians are welcome to believe it and others are welcome not to believe it. Take it away and the whole picture is totally different.

Take it away, and Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring the problems of the material world.

Take it away and Sigmund Freud was probably right to say that Christianity is a wish-fulfillment religion.

Take it away, and Friedrich Nietszche was probably right that Christianity was a religion for wimps.

Put it back and you have a faith that can take on the postmodern world that looks to Marx, Freud and Nietszche as its prophets, and you can beat them at their own game with the Easter news that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Bishop NT Wright, For All God's Worth