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But in the book, this statement is set in the context of social justice. Do you really believe the church can make the world a better place, given its track record?

I know that in lots of places, this can work in the other direction: "I had hope for humanity until I got around this church." In my experience, I've seen people across the spectrum, from hating the church to being passionately involved in churches doing great acts of healing and restoration.

I was in a remote village in Africa, and we were walking through these slums. Our guide was showing us how this church was the only group of people who were willing to go in and care for people in these shacks, people dying of AIDS and, in their last moments, give them a dignified death. In that non-Western, almost premodern context, we were sitting in these dirt-floor shacks, watching these people care for people who were taking their last breaths. And they do this because they believe in a Jesus who says, "Go to everybody who is forgotten." So, I believe in that church.

I also happen to live in 2009, in a Western hyper-churched, over-churched culture, where the flag and the cross have held hands in such a way that you have a waning Christendom at the heart of the empire. We are in this very unusual convergence of power and church and religion and Jesus, where a Christian pastor is saying a prayer at the [President's] inauguration. I mean, what?

This is a weird little thing, where we see all the distorted, loopy versions of church and say, "I don't know." And then you get yourself in some setting where you say, "Oh my word. This is beautiful!" So I've bounced back and forth between those two settings. In spite of all the filters that I have to be cynical, that's a really beautiful thing right there.

You say, "Jesus wants to save us from making the Good News about another world and not this one." What do you mean?

The story is about God's intentions to bring about a new heaven and a new earth, and the story begins here with shalom—shalom between each other and with our Maker and with the earth. The story line is that God intends to bring about a new creation, this place, this new heaven and earth here. And that Jesus' resurrection is the beginning, essentially, of the future; this great Resurrection has rushed into the present.

The evacuation theology that says, "figure out the ticket, say the right prayer, get the right formula, and then we'll go somewhere else" is lethal to Jesus, who endlessly speaks of the renewal of all things.

All well and good, but how is this good news to people with no earthly hope? If I'm dying of aids or cancer, I probably don't give a rip about the renewal of all things. I want to know if my sins are forgiven, and when I die, if am I going to see Jesus or not.

Yes, and I would say that central to that new creation is the problem with the first creation—death. The Resurrection is about God dealing with the death problem. And central to this giant cosmic hope is a very intimate, yes, you can trust this Jesus. You can trust this new creation. You can trust being with him when you die, when you leave this life, however you want to put it. Yes, there is an intensely personal dimension to this giant story that you and I get to be a part of.

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April 2009, Vol. 53, No. 4