“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”— Acts 1:11
There is something deeply fascinating about the ancient Book of Enoch.
Once I began reading about it, I could immediately see why it captured the imagination of many early Jewish and Christian believers. Its world is full of cosmic drama: rebellious angels, heavenly mysteries, judgement, visions, and vast unseen powers shaping human history. At times it feels more like mythic fantasy than what modern readers think of as religion. In fact, reading it reminded me strongly of the imaginative worlds created by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings.
And yet the Book of Enoch clearly influenced parts of the New Testament world. The letter of Jude even quotes it directly. Themes of angels, demons, cosmic conflict, and heavenly judgement were already circulating widely in Jewish thought before the time of Jesus.
But what strikes me most is how differently Jesus speaks.
It is almost as though Jesus came as a kind of lightning rod from heaven to earth, grounding the vivid religious imagination of his age back into ordinary human life.
While others speculated about heavenly hierarchies and cosmic secrets, Jesus spoke about forgiving your enemies, feeding the hungry, welcoming outsiders, and learning to trust God like a child. He taught people to pray not to a distant cosmic ruler, but to “Our Father”—a name of intimacy, dependence, tenderness, and belonging. Again and again, he redirected attention away from hidden spiritual systems and back toward the human heart.
Even when Jesus used apocalyptic language, his emphasis was usually ethical rather than speculative:
“When did we see you hungry?”
“Blessed are the merciful.”
“Love one another as I have loved you.”
The great drama was no longer “up there” somewhere in hidden heavenly realms. The drama was here—in how human beings treat one another, how power is used, how forgiveness is offered, how fear is overcome, and how love takes flesh in the world.
This may also help us understand what the New Testament means when it speaks of Jesus as “the Saviour of the world.”
Modern Christians often hear the word salvation in highly individual or otherworldly terms: how do I get to heaven? How do I escape judgement? How do I secure my eternal future?
But the language of Jesus points in a much broader direction. Again and again he calls people into metanoia—a profound change of mind, perception, and orientation. A new way of seeing reality. A new way of inhabiting the world.
Salvation, in this sense, is not escape from this created world—that we seem to be making such a mess of—but reconciliation within it.
It is learning again what truly matters.
Learning how to live without domination, greed, violence, fear, or endless striving for superiority and material accumulation. Learning how to love our neighbour, care for the vulnerable, forgive one another, tend the earth responsibly, and become truthful human beings.
In other words, salvation is not about escaping our humanity, but inhabiting it more truthfully and compassionately—learning again what it means to be embodied, relational, and fully alive. And perhaps this is part of the deeper movement running through the New Testament itself: humanity being drawn back into relationship—with God, with one another, and with creation.
The Father is no longer imagined primarily as a distant judge presiding over hidden cosmic systems, but as the source of life and generosity whom Jesus invites us to trust. The Son reveals what fully human life rooted in love looks like. And the Spirit is not an escape from the world, but the divine breath within it—awakening imagination, courage, compassion, creativity, and hope.
The movement is always downward and outward into life: into reconciliation, participation, shared humanity, and embodied presence.
This makes me wonder whether part of humanity’s deepest healing lies precisely in becoming grounded again in the world God has given us, instead of endlessly reaching beyond it in search of secret spiritual knowledge. We already have more than enough to do learning how to care for one another, create beauty, seek justice, cultivate wisdom, and live truthfully together.
Perhaps one of religion’s enduring temptations is to look beyond our proper vocation—speculating about inaccessible spiritual realms while neglecting the sacred responsibilities already placed in our hands. The first human calling in Genesis is profoundly earthy:
to tend,
to cultivate,
to name,
to care,
to walk with God within creation itself.
Perhaps this is what it means to become truly human.
Yet this does not mean Jesus rejected transcendence or contemplative depth. Far from it. Again and again, the Gospels show him withdrawing into silence, solitude, wilderness, and prayer. He spends forty days in the wilderness wrestling with temptation. He rises early to commune with the Father. He seeks stillness before crucial decisions.
But notice the character of that communion.
It does not make him less human or less grounded. It makes him more present, more compassionate, more courageous, and more lucid about power, suffering, illusion, and love.
The temptations in the wilderness are especially revealing. The devil tempts Jesus toward spectacle, certainty, power, and spiritual grandiosity—toward becoming a messiah detached from ordinary human limitation. But Jesus refuses all of it. He accepts vulnerability, patience, dependence, and trust.
That feels profoundly different from fascination with hidden spiritual systems or obsessive speculation about angels and demons.
At its healthiest, contemplative prayer is not about acquiring secret information about heavenly realms. It is about becoming attentive. Becoming inwardly quiet. Facing oneself truthfully. Letting go of illusion and control. Learning trust. Opening oneself to love. It deepens our participation in reality rather than helping us escape from it.
Perhaps this is part of what Christians mean by incarnation.
“The Word became flesh.”
Not endless ascent into speculation, but divine life grounded among ordinary people and breathed outward again through the Spirit into the healing of the world.
Not secret knowledge available only to the spiritually elite, but the revelation of God through compassion, humility, courage, truthfulness, and self-giving love.
The Book of Enoch helps us understand the imaginative world into which Jesus came. But Jesus changes the melody. He takes humanity’s longing, fear, myth, and cosmic imagination — and brings it down to earth in the form of a person.
And perhaps that remains one of the enduring challenges of spiritual maturity: not escaping the world in search of hidden realities, but learning how to inhabit this world truthfully, gratefully, lovingly, and courageously in the presence of God.
Jeremy Marks, 10th June 2026