ha'olam haba' obama

You may be asking yourself, "What the heck does that title mean?" Ah, yes. My plan is working perfectly. For those who don't know Hebrew, ha'olam haba' means "the age to come." obama means "the guy we should elect for president." No, actually, I'm not saying Barack Obama is the messiah who will usher in the age to come. The Obama gag is merely a red herring to get people all distracted. Now I'll get to the real point, and maybe you won't be as angry with me, since you'll think that I'm joking about the next part. *But I'm not.*

My premise is that we need to abandon entirely the phrase "eternal life." It is an English translation that may have worked at one point, but is now so hopelessly misunderstood as to be completely detrimental. I take that back. I don't think it ever worked. The idea of the "afterlife" was thoroughly messed up by the time the first English translation used "eternal life." The reason the phrase needs to be abandoned is because, to almost all people, it means some pseudo-embodied or completely spiritual life in heaven (on clouds or something) forever for those who are Christians. Entirely leaving out the question of who actually gets in, the record must be set straight on "the age to come."

To the best of my knowledge, "the age to come" is when all things are set right. Humanity's enemies sin and death are completely and finally abolished. Those in the community of Jesus the Messiah will live in a restored/renewed creation that has substantial continuity with this one. The main difference is that heaven (read: the realm where God dwells) will come down to earth, and the present creation will be remade. Everything will be restored to God's intention, not to say that we will have the Garden of Eden all over again, but God will dwell with us, and we will live with him in his creation as he intended from the beginning. Culture of all types will be there as marks of the creativity God instilled in us. We will continue to create wonderful things under God's auspices forever. Those who reject Jesus the Messiah and grasp for control of their own existence will be relegated to the outer reaches of the creation. They will have no part in the celebration of life that is the new creation.

Compare that description to what image is conjured by "eternal life." For about five people on the planet, those are one and the same. But those five are already not using the phrase "eternal life." "Life in the age to come" is a suitable translation that makes one stop and think about what it means.

As I was researching ha'olam haba', I found a Jewish blogger who tried to illustrate the idea. People often talk about how the present age interacts with the age to come. There is the sense for followers of Jesus that the age to come is already breaking in, because he is the firstfruits of the resurrection. But sin and death still wreak havoc on us, meaning that we are still in the present evil age. There is the sense of "already and not yet." This drawing shows a bit of that idea. I'm proud that someone is thinking about this in an artistic sense, regardless of how impossible it is to adequately illustrate this awesome reality. You can see the illustration here.