Less Valuable and More Serious – Work and Life as a Sketch

Julian Barnes, an atheist, claims that he '"misses God.'" In the midst of his reflections on a life without faith wracked by a haunting fear of death, Barnes reflects on the impact belief in heaven would make on his every day working life. '"But if life is viewed as a rehearsal, or a preparation, or an anteroom . . . then it [our present life] becomes at the same time less valuable and more serious.'"   It appears that Barnes, if he were to believe in God and a heaven, would see life now as speck of time swallowed into eternity. Therefore, our life now is '"less valuable.'" But because there would be an eternity, life now would become '"more serious'" because what we do now matters for eternity. But, as Barnes puts it, he misses God and therefore he misses a life that is shaped by eternity.

The believing Roman Catholic British novelist, J.R.R. Tolkien of The Lord of the Rings fame neither missed God nor eternity. Were Tolkien alive, he might counter Barnes and argue that our lives now are  '"both more valuable and more serious.'" In a typical manner, Barnes confuses Christian belief in heaven with Platonism. Plato believed our bodies and earthly lives really don’t matter and that what really matters is our immortal soul. Such a mistaken view of Christianity alone makes life on earth '"less valuable.'"  We dare not underestimate how a Platonic worldview affects our view of work. There is a better Christian way, and Tolkien worked it out for us in a short story called Leaf by Niggle, a wonderful tale about a little silly man named '"Niggle.'"  …

… The theology here is a theology of work: what we do now is a glimpse of what we will do then. What we do now prepares us to do what we will do then. What we do now will become the raw materials of what we will do then. What we do now, however incomplete and however below even our own standards, will one day be swallowed up into God’s redemptive perfection and our work will radiate with God’s own glory.  The notion that heaven, and I’d prefer to call it the New Heavens and the New Earth, is simply singing in a heavenly choir and that we will float from one praise service to another and that our bodies and jobs will all be left behind is Platonism. That view is not biblical. …