A "Surprised by Hope" refresher

In light of Easter recently, I decided to look back through N.T. Wright's book.  Here are some things that stuck out:

-Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize a different worldview is possible...

-In the last 200 years, western thought has overemphasized the individual at the expense of the larger picture of God's creation.

-The gnostics believed, like Plato, that the material world was an inferior and dark place...(sounds sadly like what I have been taught in Christian culture)

-The early Christians believed that God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter

-What creation needs is neither abandonment nor evolution but rather redemption an renewal; this is both promised and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

-All that we do in faith, hope, and love in the present, in obedience to our ascended Lord and in the power of his spirit, will be enhanced and transformed at his appearing.

-The NT, true to it's OT roots, regularly insists that the major, central, framing question is that of God's purpose of rescue and re-creation for the whole world, the entire cosmos.  The destiny of individual human beings must be understood within that context- not simply in the sense that we are only part of a much larger picture but also in the sense that part of the whole point of being saved in the present in so that we can play a vital role within the larger picture and purpose.

-It's no good falling in to the tired old split-level world where some believe in evangelism in terms of saving souls for a timeless eternity and other people believe in mission in terms of working for justice, peace and hope in the present world.  The great divide has nothing to do with Jesus and the NT and everything to do with the silent enslavement of many Christians (both conservative and radical) to the Platonic ideology of the enlightenment.

-We are saved not as souls, but as wholes.

-Our response must be that because we believe in the resurrection of Jesus as an event within history, we believe that the living God has already begun the process of new creation, and what may seem impossible in human terms is possible to God.

-When people cease to be surrounded by beauty, they cease to hope.  They internalize the message of their eyes and ears, the message that whispers that they are not worth very much, that they are in effect lass than fully human.

-Personal holiness and global holiness belong together.

-When the church is living out the kingdom of God, the word of God will spread powerfully and do its own work.