The end of the Good Place was the saddest ending to a TV show I have ever experienced. But not for the reasons you might think.

NBC recently concluded The Good Place, a witty, thoughtful, and heartfelt comedy about demons, angels, philosophy, and the afterlife. I thoroughly enjoyed this show, it had all the devastatingly funny smarts of 30 Rock with the warmth of The Office or Parks and Rec. The degree of difficulty of making jokes out of Kant is not to be underestimated. But even more, I found myself watching the show as a sort of a cultural commentary. What does a post-truth culture have so say about heaven and eternal life?^[1]At this point I want to offer a huge caveat. I am not critiquing the show itself. I loved the show, I thought the characters were brilliantly conceived—especially Sean, the head demon, who in the … Continue reading

Turns out, not much. I don’t say this critically or dismissively. But the show ends as each of the four main characters reaches a state of contentment in their eternal state and essentially euthanize their soul in a way suggestive of Buddhism, emptying one’s self of desire to the point where there’s nothing else to live for. The conclusion had all the tear-filled warmth of the endings of the best stories, minus the “happily ever after.”

In the penultimate episode of the show, we arrive at an eternal cocktail party where the residents of the Good Place are slowly evaporating into mindless pleasure zombies. They have lived in such lavish luxury with no conflict, sickness, or pain that all of the meaning has been ever so slowly emptied out of existence. This malaise is embodied by the Neoplatonist Hypatia of Alexandria, who studied philosophy and astronomy in the 3rd-4th centuries—Chidi even drops an amazing “I love her in a Neo-Platonic” way that though, it kills, is not enough to break the hypnosis of this aimless ‘Good Place.” The show’s solution to this problem: there has to be an end. It’s death, the writers conclude, that gives life meaning. So, in the trajectory of the show, even eternal life has to have an end.

In the last episode we see each of the main characters pray the prayer of annihilation, welcoming their own personal relationship with Nirvana, where they have done all there is to do, eaten all that there is to eat, seen everywhere there is to see. They reach this “inner peace” that clues them into the call to walk across the threshold of existence to non-being. We are supposed to see the nobility and peace of their contentment but watching each character reach this climactic moment to end all moments, I found myself not deeply moved at their nobility of spirit or rejoicing with them as they reached contentment but indignant at the smallness of the story.

The Good Place has no room for eternity, no room for individualism (a profound irony in a Western story about heaven), and ultimately, no room for love. The show is content to let philosophy and ethics be a guide for mapping the good life rather than love. Philosophy has historically questioned what is a good life and preparation, as Cicero says, for “learning how to die.”

But love, love teaches us how to live. Love makes us fully our authentic selves. The Bible bears witness to not just an everlasting God, an eternal being who not only exists without beginning or end but whose disposition towards the world at large and individuals made in his image is unfailing love (Jer. 31v3). Jesus came to earth to remove the sickness of sin from our hearts which like a wasting disease slowly eroded our bodies and souls. His death on the cross and resurrection to his reign unending declare to one and all that though it seems that entropy and ending are the ways of the universe, there is a grace that is stronger than the grave.


The Good places essentially portrays the main characters consuming life. Over the eons of multidimensional time, or as the Good Place hilariously labels them, Jeremy Bearimy’s, the characters visit every magnificent city, every time period, eat at every great restaurant, and even play the perfect game of Madden (BORTTLLLES!). At the end, there is nothing left to do but to surrender one’s soul to the ether. Life has been consumed. But the Bible tells a different story, of a love that never fails, a love that can never be consumed (Romans 8). But even more, that this love is so magnificent that it will always evoke our desire, always divulge deeper depths, always make us more creative, more exploratory, more loving, more ourselves.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 declares that God has placed eternity in the human heart. The great philosopher Augustine (to my recollection completely ignored by The Good Place) says of our longings even in heaven that we “will be insatiably satisfied, without growing weary. We will always be hungering, and always being filled.” ^[2]Augustine, Sermon

The impulse to say that it’s arrogant that we should think that we as individuals should live forever may sound noble in its humility, but its the humility born of, to channel Lewis, thinking less of ourselves, rather than thinking of ourselves less. Greg Boyle, the Jesuit priest who works with at-risk and gang-affiliated young people in in Los Angeles reminds us, “Human beings are settlers, but not in the pioneer sense. It is our human occupational hazard to settle for little.” The Good Place is a settlement built upon a small story. But we were created for more.

This world with all of its pain, all of its suffering, all of its beauty aches for more. We long for justice, love, peace, community, to be fully known, and ultimately, we long for love. Perhaps we need an eternity that cannot exhaust our longings but an eternity that forever, in the paradoxical way that all the best things work, both fills our deepest longings and creates them. The love of God never fails, through life, death, and every Jeremy Bearimy, we shall never cease to hang on every word that comes from the mouth of God.^[3]Hans urs Von Balthasar

If you were to turn on the news, there is very little in the way of observable data that would suggest that an all-powerful, all-loving God currently presides over the world as its one true sovereign.  Leave the events that the news details aside, would a loving God really suffer the inanity that floods the airwaves of the 24/7 news programs?    If we were to accept the notion that there was some integrating force to the disparate, chaotic nonsense that saturates the front pages of every news website, it would seem any thoughtful person would conclude that this ruler is quite terrible at the business of actually governing the world.  And yet, in the biblical narrative, almost hidden between the astounding resurrection of Christ at the end of each gospel account and the birth of the church in Acts 2 is an event that gives clarity and shape to both events, an event largely ignored by the western Church:  the ascension of Jesus.

Yes, the biblical claim is that Jesus sits at the right hand of God almighty, enthroned as the world’s true Lord reigning right now.  So what on earth is he doing up there?  What does it mean for Jesus to be Lord in the here and now?  First, let’s examine some distortions of this claim.  The Epicureans were the descendants of the philosopher Epicurus.  Although this perspective later came to be associated with wanton pleasure-seeking, Epicurus did not promote this sort of behavior.  Epicurus merely taught that the gods, whomever they are, exist in eternal bliss and are unaffected and disinterested in the affairs of mortals.  His legacy found its most influential expression in the Enlightenment in what was referred to as deism, essentially that God was an eternal watchmaker that built the timepiece, put the battery in it and left it to function however it would.  Thomas Jefferson famously claimed to be an Epicurean.   In a letter written late in his life to William Short, he wrote:

Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. – Thomas Jefferson, October, 1819

Notice, for Jefferson it is Epicurus who tells us how to govern ourselves, Jesus is just a nice add-on.  Separation of church and state, if you will.  As NT Wright often points out this is the fundamental assumption of the Enlightenment that God is the ruler of heaven and he stays up there and leaves the governance of the earth to humans.  Jesus is Lord thus implies the dualism that Jesus is Lord of the heavenly realm but can hardly be bothered with intervention in the earthly sphere.

The second distortion of the claim Jesus is Lord touches less upon politics and more upon theodicy and providence.  The Stoics, a philosophical school which gained prominence in the early centuries of the common era Roman Empire, share a lot of similar convictions to Christians.  There are even apocryphal letters, fabrications of later history, between Seneca and Paul. For the Stoics, for women and men to allow their emotions and impulses to govern their behavior is the height of vice and results not in freedom but the debasement of what it means to be human.  The stoics believed that the world was initially constructed out of divine matter (Gk. pneuma meaning “spirit”) and that eventually the world would be dissolved by the deity into primeval fire.  For the stoics, all of existence was an expression of the divine will, they were pantheists for whom the divine operated in every occurrence of nature and human interaction, and thus everything truly happened “for a reason.”

For Jesus to be “Lord” in the biblical sense did not entail either of these trajectories.  He was neither the Lord of heaven alone and subsequent absent landlord of earth nor the micromanager of the cosmos.  Jesus’ lordship like, it seems, all of the most hallowed and beautiful Christian claims is a paradox.  A paradox of distance and nearness.  In the distortions of Epicureanism and Stoicism we see an overemphasis upon one element of the truth but the Gospel continually shows itself capable of holding seemingly disparate parts in concert together.  Jesus’ lordship is one of distance, transcendence.  His resurrection has affirmed him as the world’s true Lord, the king of kings to which all earthly authorities will give accounting for their stewardship over their peoples and resources.  Paul describes this present reality in Ephesians 1:

20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Jesus is enthroned, he is the one to whom all owe allegiance.  But he is not simply ruling elsewhere.  I think the temptation here is to think of Jesus’ reign in terms of some of our cultural stories like Tolkien’s Return of the King where the deposed sovereign works to reoccupy their rightful throne that is currently subsumed by dark forces.  For the biblical timeline, Jesus has already done the work of deposing evil on the cross, by absorbing the full weight of sin and death and exhausting their powers.  The ascension is Jesus’ sabbath rest after recreating the world, he sits down at the right hand of the Father and beckons the whole world to enter into his rest.  Jesus is risen and reigning, resting in the completion of his fulfillment of all righteousness.  Right now.

His Lordship means transcendence, but to be truly transcendent is to transcend every distance.  He is near.  He is God with us, the one who will never leave us or forsake us, in the heights of heaven or the depths of sheol, he is there.  There is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from his gracious presence.  Jesus’ reign is not that of an  austere demagogue signing executive orders from heaven but the loving shepherd leading and walking alongside his people, even in the valley of the shadow of death, even to the end of the age.

Distance and nearness.  Power and pathos.  As Christians we are called to live out this paradox, as witnesses to the Lordship of Christ, in the worlds that we walk in.  Jesus’ has exercised his sovereignty in emptying himself fully entrusting his life in the hands of the Father.  He has given us his divine Spirit to do the same.  It may seem a tautology but we can live out the Lordship of Jesus because Jesus is Lord.  We enact and embody his power whenever we, together as church communities, embody the alternative Kingdom, when we refuse the pragmatics of party politics and instead bear unique prophetic witness even at great cost to self.  We embody his power when our we receive the grace of his rule and our lives and words announce the resurrection and reign of King Jesus.   We incarnate the nearness of our God when we suffer on behalf of the world.  We find strength, hope, joy, and yes, even resurrection in those places because our God, King Jesus, is with us always.

The rest of Acts bears witness to the Lordship of Jesus.  The mysterious Spirit of God descends upon the people enabling them to live out this Lordship.  They respond not by grasping for power but rather by bearing witness:  praising God, delighting in the words of Scripture and the surprising and beautiful story they tell about Jesus, sharing their stuff, taking care of widows, healing the sick, proclaiming the reality of the resurrection, and bearing prophetic witness to the emissaries of the Roman governor that Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.

Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger (v.2)

Psalm 8 is all about power.  The word translated “bulwark” simply means strength or might.  But notice where the Lord’s strength is on display, not in deeds of mighty kings, or by the wealth of the rich, but in the cries of infants.  These cries testify to the power of the Lord so greatly that the enemy is silenced.  The psalmist goes on, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”  David is in awe of the Lord’s mighty strength, the world “charged with the glory of God” in the stars that light the night.  He asks the question that so many agnostics have understandably asked for centuries:  “If there’s a god that made the entire universe with all its vastness, why would he concern himself with humanity?”  Again, David displays this imbalance of power:  the Creator God, maker of Heaven and Earth, and women and men, each one who’s days on the earth are “but a breath” (Ps. 103).

This whole psalm is subverting our own expectations of power dynamics.  God’s praise in the mouths of babies is strong enough to vanquish armies, the maker of the whole cosmos has numbered both the stars in the sky and the hairs on the heads of his children.  And its here that David appeals to the origin stories of his people.  You see, the people of Israel are not only daring enough to assert that there is one God who made heaven and earth, but also that this God has shared his rule and reign with humanity.  The psalmist declares:

Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. 6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,  all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas (vv. 6-8).  

David asserts the royalty of women and men made in God’s image and then lists the creatures whom they reign over in the opposite order we find in Genesis 1:24-26 (land animals>birds>fish).  To be made in the image of God is to share in the rule of God.  We should look at the world in awestruck wonder and in the same way marvel at the tasks that God invites us to know him in.  Whereas many of the previous psalms have been about rest, this psalm is about work.  This is not a celebration of power for power’s sake but a recognition that we are called to wield our power in a way that brings life to the world.  The work of God informs our own work and makes it a way that we can know him. The work that we engage in every day is done recognizing that everything has been put under our feet.  Our work is a way that we can know God and thus it is holy ground.  We both remove our shoes in awe and wonder at the works of the Lord and put on our boots marveling that we get to participate with him in the redemption of all things.

For meditation:
What would it look like for your everyday work to declare:  O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

This site is dedicated to the tension of life- the dissonance between already and not yet, between eternal bliss and daily monotony, between the dignifying words of God and the dehumanizing slogans of life, between the suspiciously sacred and the supposedly secular.   Emily Dickinson, recluse prophetess-poet, was a master at weaving life and possibility out of this tension.  In her poem no. 5, the last stanza declares:

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.

The Scriptures, the holy words recorded in Old and New Testament will be our prism as we allow them to refract the revelation of Father, Spirit, and Son into every corner of our world.  The Scriptures tell stories—stories about life, family, beauty, and loss.  These stories all coalesce into a single story of God revealing himself in the ordinary lives of women and men.  In this space, I will endeavor to follow a similar arc.  I want to invite you to see where all these disparate “parts” of our lives find congruence, living, moving, and having their being in Christ Jesus.   But mostly I pray that the one who spoke the creation into being will spark life in the very core of who you are, inviting you to find yourself addressed and embraced as a daughter, a son of God.