In the Western tradition particularly, we Christians have always thought the name of the game was to leave earth and go to heaven instead, but that’s simply a parody. To be sure, there is much about earth as it is at the moment which is sad, dark, gloomy, and evil. We want to be rid of all that, and to be with God instead. But the whole point of the biblical revelation is that the God who made heaven and earth together in the first place is going to renew them, so that the end of the whole story will not be heaven by itself, but God’s new heaven and new earth.

As humans we are called to live as symbols of the heaven-and-earth creation.