The Future Soon...

A few weeks ago, our church had a talent show (an annual part of our culture, which is really cool). I had been told several times since I've been here that all of the pastor's participate. So I prepared something. I found out on the night, that I was the only pastor doing anything. I'm a sucker.

I sang a song called "The Future Soon" by Jonathan Coulton. It's really a funny song, essentially telling the inner thoughts of someone who is perhaps in 5th grade, having been rejected by a girl, and how he sees the future playing out. It's a really silly song that is funny and sweet.

I sang the song not in Jonathan Coulton's style, but in The Adventurers Club style (an amazing place in Walt Disney World that sadly is no longer there) which is far dorkier and sweeter. Whenever I get the chance, I'll post video of it. It was quite fun.

All of that is a long way to go to get to the notion of the song that intrigues me. The notion comes from the chorus, and got me going on a line of thought that was far more theologically probing than the song itself even begins to be. It is just a silly song. The chorus of the song goes like this:

It's gonna be the future soon.
I won't always be this way,
when the things that make me week and strange
get engineered away.
It's gonna be the future soon.
I can see it all so clear.
When my heart is breaking
I just close my eyes and it's already here.

I really like that phrase, "it's gonna be the future soon." It's so optimistic. It gets to this sense of looking beyond where we are and trying to strive for the "not yet." In that way, it's very similar to how Christians should look at the world. This notion that the thing that we are living for is not here yet, but it's coming. Not maybe, but definitely. If it's not hear yet, that doesn't mean that it's not coming, that just means that it's not "the future" yet.

God doesn't promise the world to be perfect life in the here and now. In fact, quite the oppisite. All too often though, I think that Christianity is sold as such. Prosperity gospel. Get saved and start rolling in the blessings. That's not how it works. But that doesn't change the promise. Yes, there are immediate blessings, but you still have to deal with crap and suffer, because we don't live in a perfect world, we live in a broken world, and we are still subject to the effects of that brokenness. But we don't follow Christ to get a reward. We follow Christ because Christ offers salvation - Christ offers a future. Without that future, all you have is this, and this isn't really all that great. It's broken. The future is fixed. The future is perfect.

In 1st Corinthians 13, Paul puts it this way:

8But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

The promise is that it's going to be the future soon, and things are all going to work out then. If everything isn't working out yet, than it's not the future yet.

...when my heart is breaking, I just close my eyes and it's already here.