Begin with the End in mind?

To begin with the end in mind: This was an ideal of Christian ethics long before it was a catch phrase for design thinking, an axiom of corporate management culture, or a technique for scientific application. Although many Christians have forgotten this, much to our detriment and the world’s. 


Because, in Christ’s resurrection the future Hope of full healing and human flourishing has erupted into the middle of History. And our Creed proclaims we all await being raised to new life when Christ returns to “liberate the living and the dead” from all the forces of destruction and death that hold us in bondage. This is God’s Future when, according to the last chapters of the last book of Christian Scripture, humans will dwell fully in God, and God will dwell fully in us, as Christ wipes every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more suffering or heartache, as Life swallows up death forever. 

This Hope should motivate our present action to actualize the New Life Christ initiated 20 centuries ago. We should be beginning with this End in mind, living with this Vision in sight. Our treatment of each other and our world should be “as if”: We must act as if this future Hope of full and abundant life for all was already a reality. Imagine what this world would look like if 2.3 billion Christ-followers lived “as if” they were actually working to bring about the Future that Christ promised. 

But instead of active striving into the Future of God, we often opt to passively cower inside our cultural ghettos and retreat into our ideological bunkers. We don’t want to work or struggle to see justice and righteousness actualized as much as we just want to be comfortable until life is over and done with, and we can go to “heaven” as our reward. As a result of our ethical and spiritual abdication, we have left our world no option but to pursue partial and hollow secular hopes. Whether it is the anemic grey uniformity of failed Marxist Utopias, or the obese gluttony of prosperity and entertainment promised by Consumer Capitalism, we live in a world starving for substance, depth, meaning, and purpose. 

The ideal of the Church stands in stark opposition to both Christian passivity and counterfeit secular hopes. Instead of waiting fearfully for death to take us, we strive boldly to bring the Future Life of the Resurrection into the ever present NOW. Because the Church is not merely a gathering of God’s children, or a community of the Spirit. The Church is also the Body of Christ: The continuation of Christ’s incarnation by other means, in other lives, through other bodies. In a very real and yet anticipatory way, WE are the second coming of Christ, as his Body, doing his work to raise the dead to life, to heal the sick, and to liberate the living and the dead. It isn’t just a promise we wait for THEN, it is a life we embody together right NOW. 

Or to put it in a different metaphor offered by theologian Ted Peters: God is not just our past Source, or our present Strength. God is our Future, and that Future reaches back in time and shapes time and history into its image. So we look back to God our Father as our Divine Source, the Love that brought all worlds into being, and which embraces us and sends us out to share in that Love. But we also look forward to God the Son, who is the fulfillment of what it means to be fully human and fully divine, who calls us ever onward to grow into that Divine fullness through Himself. And as we are sent from the Father to strive toward the Son, we rely on the Holy Spirit, the power of Love that overcomes hate, and Life that overcomes death. It is the Spirit who empowers us to live with the End in mind. 

And thus, Christian ethics and social action could learn much from Design Thinking. And Design Thinking can find its true purpose and meaning in Christian Hope.