Huizinga and Oasis on the Hope of Heaven

Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

These are the words of Dutch historian Johan Huizinga as quoted by John Bolt in his book A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper's American Public Theology. Not only are they words that most people would be able to affirm from their own experience, but they also speak of a inborn, creational longing for closer communion with God that is very much in line with Kuyper's creational theology. We have a combination of wonderful and exciting experiences on this earth despite our sinful condition, as well as more devastating experiences that show us how deeply that sin really affects us. These two factors come together to make us long for the future glory of standing in the presence of God and also escaping from the present corruption.

While this is a natural desire, and one that works as a necessary and proper motivation for anyone with a revelation of Christ, it seems that there are certain pitfalls that must be avoided. The use of the neo-calvinistic "structure/direction" distinction will be helpful here. Since looking forward to and anticipating the day when we will be in full communion with the Lord is obviously a good creational structure (most would argue that even pre-fall Adam and Eve looked forward to an increasing fellowship with God than the one that they initially had in the garden) we must be careful that the direction of this desire does not become misguided. As Huizinga states, the more "confusing the present, the more intense that yearning." Every age presents it's own set of tragedies and hardships, and a serious mistake in developing our desire for a more beautiful and restored earth would be to focus too exclusively on the difficulties of our own time and place. This sort of thing can often be heard coming from secular thinkers who would seek to set up their own man made paradise. In doing so, they attempt to alleviate the very real problems of ethic wars and racism with talk of multiculturalism one-world governments. In doing this, an earnest desire to see the injustices of the world set right becomes a misguided attempt to set up an alternative kingdom. It seems that a correction of this misdirection would come through a purposed examination of what the implications of a revelation of Christ are for issues such as ethnic cleansing and racism. It will only be this Christ centered longing for a more beautiful world that will truly bear fruit.

One of the things that helped to punctuate this quotation from Huizinga for me was a sort of providential music selection. Just moments after reading the quote, I heard the voice of Noel Gallagher of my favorite band, Oasis, drifting in from the next room. In lyrics from the song "Some Might Say," Noel expresses this very longing of oppressed and downtrodden people for a celestial home:

Some might say they don't believe in heaven
Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell