Thoughts About Salvation
The other day I was driving to my parents house and I passed a church sign that said the following ...
"I was condemned to die in hell, but God ..."
This is the message of salvation that I was fed a steady diet of for a good 30 years of my life - I was born a wretched and no good sinner who is neither deserving nor worthy of any good thing ... but God ... but God sentenced Jesus to die in my place and to accept the punishment that I deserve so that if I believe in him and his saving work then I get to go to heaven when I die and if I don't then I'm destined for eternal torment in the fires of hell.
Some teachers taught it even more bluntly than that.
Some pastors gave a slightly less scary version.
Some professors tried to make it sound more scholarly.
BUT.
In some way, shape, or form - that was the storyline I was given, and that's how I was taught to understand the Gospel Message, the Good News.
And I was given verses to support this narrative, of course. All the typical ones - John 3:16, pretty much the whole book of Romans, verses from Revelation and the Gospels. I was armed with a bazillion verses and taught about various church fathers who preached various versions of the narrative, and I was told that if I ever swayed from the narrative or began to think of it differently, that meant that the Devil had gotten into my heart and my mind and I was destined to spiral into a dark life where I'd become an agent of evil (no, I'm not exaggerating or being sarcastic - that's what I was taught).
The narrative began to fall apart for me, though, the first time my daughter touched me.
I've shared this on the podcast a few times, but after she was born the doctors immediately rushed her to the NICU because she was having some trouble breathing on her own. My wife was still in recovery and so I went with her feeling completely inadequate, uncertain, and scared out of my mind. They quickly got her in a tank, hooked up a whole bunch of tubes and wires to her her small, frail body and told me that I could stick my hand in the tank so that she would begin to know my touch and sense that she was not alone.
And so I did.
I stuck my hand in the tank and within seconds her little hand latched onto my finger and she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Most parents would simply be amazed that this small person that they created was in front of them in the flesh, but me? My mind immediately went to theology.
"Wait a minute", I thought. "Am I really supposed to believe that this baby is sinful? That my daughter who is literally minutes old is already marked and marred by some sort of sin nature simply because she is the result of sexual act that God created and called ‘good’? Like, God - are you looking at my child right now and truly telling me that unless she grows up to say a prayer and believe all the right things about Jesus and you and the Bible ... that she's destined to be condemned in hell?"
I told God in the NICU that day, on March 30, 2017, that I no longer believed that and if he had a problem with it I'd rather spend eternity in hell than think for even a second that my daughter who had her hand wrapped around my finger was sinful or dirty or marred.
My daughter was not born sinful.
Which means that I was not born sinful.
Which means that the whole Gospel narrative I spoke of earlier falls apart ... right? Because if I'm not born sinful then God isn't mad at me and Jesus didn't need to die in my place and I don't need to believe in that saving work in order to get into heaven and avoid hell.
But.
But, that's all I knew. Right? Like, that message is the message that was pumped into my mind for 30+ years and I didn't have any other lens through which to view the work of Jesus.
Why did he die?
What is salvation?
If I'm not saved from "my sin nature", what am I saved from?
What's the point of ... all of this?
The doctrine of "original sin" came about in the 400's from the mind of guy named Augustine and Augustine actually believed that "sin" was embedded in the semen of a man and that it was through semen that sin had been passed on from Adam all the way down to you and me and my daughter and everyone else in the whole universe (except for Jesus because Joseph's semen wasn't part of his creation - God stepped in and somehow made things happen without Joseph being involved and so since Jesus's beginning was without semen, he was also without sin).
Anyways.
During the time of Augustine there was another theologian making noise named Pelagius and Pelagius is someone you don't hear much about in the church because he believed the exact opposite of Augustine and Augustine (therefore) condemned him a heretic.
You see, whereas Augustine believed that a child was sinful the moment it was conceived, Pelagius believed that ...
Not only was a baby NOT sinful.
And NOT born with "original sin".
BUT.
He believed that a baby was absolutely and 100% perfect because the moment parents lay eyes on their baby for the very first time, they're actually seeing a miracle that is fresh off the hand of God and in that moment are (perhaps) closer to God than they have ever been before.
It's funny, though, that in church we're typically only told about ONE stream of thought, right? We're told the stream of thought that keeps us toeing the line, that keeps us in the theological box that churches and pastors and elders and denominational leaders have created for us. We're told the narrative that keeps us glued to the way everyone else thinks, the way everyone expects us to think.
Augustine.
Original Sin.
God's Anger.
Judgement.
Sacrifice.
Heaven.
Hell.
What's important to realize, though, is that there has always been diversity in the church and there have always been many ways to think about topics like sin and salvation and the cross and Jesus and all the things that are different from what some might consider "the norm". All throughout church history there have been teachers and thinkers and scholars and writers who have rejected original sin and the whole narrative that teaches us that Jesus died to save us from his angry dad who is waiting to pull the trigger and condemn us to die in hell.
All that said, if Jesus didn't die to save us from his angry dad and if you and I and my daughter weren't born sinners who are destined to hell unless we say a prayer and put our faith in this work of Christ ... then what's the point?
What is the narrative?
What is the cross?
Why did Jesus die?
Why are we here?
Where are we headed?
It feels like a Jenga tower is collapsing, right? The idea of "sin" is the bottom block that keeps the whole tower standing strong and so once that block is yanked out of place, the tower begins to sway and it's only a matter of time before you're left standing in the debris of questions.
Unfortunately, there's no way to piece the whole thing back together in a blog post. I'm finding that it takes a lifetime, really, as the answers come on the tails of more questions; and those answers evolve and change and shift over time (creating more questions!) as you encounter Christ through the Bible, through history, through people, through family, through friends, through enemies, through infants and children and rich people and poor people and gay people and straight people and white people and black people and democratic people and republican people.
We encounter Christ in everyone we meet, I think, and so every interaction can help us learn a little something more about God and the Divine than we thought we knew before.
My Jenga blocks are still spread far and wide throughout my life, but these days this is where I'm at with the whole topic of salvation and the cross ...
I think we were all born perfect.
I mean, how could we not be? Right? We were made in the image of God. In the image of God, we were created. We came from the Light, the Light lives inside of us. As Christ himself said, "we are the Light of the world" just as he is the Light of the world. And so it's my destiny to be Light to others, to be a friend to the friendless, to obliterate oppression with love and grace and kindness and generosity. At my deepest core, that's who I am - that's who you are, that's who we all are - LOVE. The writer of 1 John said that God is love and so if I'm made in the image of God then I'm love too - always have been, always will be.
And so I don't need to be saved from my sin nature. If my very nature is love and light, how can it possibly be sinful?
BUT.
I do need to be saved from my terrible memory because after living here for so long, it's become easy for me to forget who I am, to forget where I came from, and to forget how to live.
It's easy to forget that I'm made in the image of God.
It's easy to forget that I come from the Light.
It's easy to forget that the Light lives inside of me.
It's easy to forget that I am a reflection of God.
It's easy to choose hate over love, bitterness over forgiveness, pride over humility. It's easy to forget where I came from, forget who I am, and forget how to live.
And so God came and lived inside of Jesus to remind us who we are, to remind us where we came from, to remind us of what's true about each and every one of us. He modeled life for us - showed us how to live and love and help and care ... how to be Light.
The cross is the best example of this. Isn't it? It had to happen, really. Because how else could such a central message of love be shown? God came to show us how to live, but the world hated it - the world wanted to keep hating, keep holding on to bitterness and anger and rage and selfishness and pride, keep casting out, keep shrinking the table to make less and less room for those on the outside. And so rather than embrace the works of Jesus and embrace the Light within, the world rejected it and put him on a cross.
Rather than accept all that God was trying to teach through Jesus, the world put Jesus on the cross and killed God.
Even so, with his very last breath God shouted forgiveness from the cross showing that God's love literally has no limits, no boundaries, no end. It was the ultimate example and the ultimate sacrifice - God giving up his life to show us what it looks like to be truly human, truly alive, truly Light, truly love.
And so the question becomes ...
Can our love be the same?
Can our Light shine just as bright?
Can we wake up to that love that is instilled within us?
Can we remember who we are, where we came from, what we're here to do, who's image we're here to reflect?
Salvation happens when we begin to wake up, I think, when we begin to remember - when we begin to remember how to love, how to choose love over hate and forgiveness over bitterness. It begins when we start to tap into the Light that is in us and start realizing that there's nothing we need to do to earn God's love or find God because we were never separate from God or her love to begin with. God has always been inside of us and we've always been inside of God, it's just that we've become so accustomed to the world in which we live that we've forgotten it all, we've lost our focus.
Salvation is about regaining focus and waking up so that we can reflect God's Light onto others and partner with Christ in helping people remember and wake up and tap into the Light that's within them.
Perhaps this is why the writer of Ephesians said, "Wake up oh sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."
Maybe the message of the cross isn't so much about Christ dying to save me from his angry dad, but maybe it's an invitation from God to wake up. Maybe it's meant to be a mirror that we can look into so that we can see true love and true grace and true humility reflected back at us so that when what see in Christ on the cross reflects back into our eyes and hits our hearts ...
We will awaken from our slumber.
The dust will be blown off our true self.
... And we will begin to rise to our true calling, to our true self, as we reflect the love and grace and goodness of the Divine to everyone, everywhere, thus making this world a little bit more like heaven.
That sounds like Good News to me.
Peace.
Glenn
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