If new heavens and a new earth are coming, can we throw this world away?

🔥The question: “The earth is going to be gone and we'll go to heaven anyway, so is there any point in caring for the environment and society?”

🛡️The Church's answer: The final completion is not God throwing a failed creation out like garbage and moving souls somewhere else. The Church believes that along with the resurrection of the body the universe itself will be mysteriously made new in Christ, and will become the ‘new heavens and new earth’ where justice dwells. There is continuity with the present world, but the way it is set free from sin, death, and suffering and transfigured is not something we can explain scientifically in advance.

The hope of a new creation does not shrink our present responsibility; it enlarges it. The Catechism teaches that waiting for a new earth must stir up, rather than weaken, our concern for developing this one. Caring for the environment, making peace, and helping the poor do not by themselves produce the fullness of the kingdom of God — but the fruits of love and justice we bear according to God's will are purified, transfigured, and found again within that fullness.

🧐If they press further: “Then if human technology makes the world perfect, is the second coming unnecessary?” — no. Social progress matters, but we cannot abolish sin and death by ourselves and complete the kingdom of God. We don't serve a utopia as though it were God — and we don't leave injustice alone on the grounds that it is ‘God's work to do.’

✨In one sentence: “The new creation isn't a plan for abandoning the earth and escaping; it is God bringing human beings and the universe to completion, made new in Christ. That is exactly why we have to care for this earth more responsibly now.”