No place is the Good Place – What Does This Mean?

Our world is an evil place. Full of selfishness, violence, envy and hatred, people kill and torture each other, steal from each other destroy neighborhoods and businesses and ruin the lives of their neighbors. Christians are attacked for their faith and for trying to live life according to God’s word. Don’t you wish that all good, Lutheran Christians could move to a new place, live according to the will of God and love for each other?

We’re not the first Christians to think this way. Some Christians moved to desert areas where they lived more or less by themselves or in communities dedicated to live a pure Christian life. Called Monks (from the latin word for being alone) and Nuns, it worked to a certain degree. But as a project to live sinless lives, it failed every time. It turns out that even the most pious Christian has a sinful nature living in them. No place and be the good place, because there is no one in this world who lives a sinless life.

American history is filled with communities which thought the could achieve an ideal society by inviting only Christians committed to the vision of its founder to settle in it. Sir Thomas More wrote a satire in 1516 he called Utopia (a pun on two Greek words that mean good place and no place) making fun of life in his time. He set it on an imaginary island in America. The Puritans tried such a community in Massachusetts, followed by the Quakers, the Moravians, the Amana Colonies, non-Christian movements such as the Shakers, the Mormons, the Harmonists and others — and even Lutherans in Perry County, Missouri and the Saginaw Valley in Michigan.

The problem was that no place in this life is the good place. The Old Adam and Old Eve live in the hearts of every Christian. Sin will emerge sooner or later. We can’t expect perfection here. Such communities often produce much good but when people put their trust in them and not God, they are bound to be disappointed.

The solution to the evil world is in Christ. He took the sins of the world on himself, bore them to the cross where he died to pay the price for the damage they caused, breaking the power of sin and death forever. On the last day, he will bring an end to evil once and for all, raise us all from the dead, transform our bodies for everlasting life. We will live together with him without sin, death, disease and evil. That is the good place.

So, if pulling out of the world is not a good solution for Christians, how do we cope? As most Christians have done for two thousand years, we continue to live in the world, but live according to the Word of God. We gather with other Christians, receive the gifts God desires to give us: the forgiveness of our sins, the hearing of his word of life, which has the power to change our hearts and the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus, which is food for the journey. We live for the next life, to witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus and to strengthen each other for the journey. Then, before we know it, we will be in that Good Place which lasts not for a lifetime, but forever.