by Lowell Grisham

 

published in the Northwest Arkansas Times, Fayetteville, AR

August 3, 2009

 

The Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori ruffled some feathers the other day with a comment in her opening address to the General Convention.  As she reflected on the global environmental and economic crisis, she said this:  "The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.  It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus.  That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being." 

I've heard it said that heresy is having part of the truth and beating the rest of the truth to death with it.  In that sense, what the Presiding Bishop complains of is heresy. 

Many of us grew up being told that our fundamental identity as human beings is as "sinners," condemned by a Holy God to a well-deserved punishment of eternal damnation and torment.  The only way out is to believe that Jesus died for your sins, paying your debt to God.  If you confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and you are saved, which means you go to heaven when you die. 

Religion reduced to a transaction.  A very self-serving, individualistic transaction at that.  I got my ticket.  Too bad for you if you don't get yours.

Russian theologian Nicholas Berdyaev stayed up all night worrying about the concept of heaven.  He wondered how could he die and then go to heaven, where all of his desires would be fulfilled, and yet still be conscious of someone in hell?  How could he still be in heaven knowing someone else was weeping and gnashing their teeth forever?

Salvation is a rich word.  It means so much more than going to heaven when you die. 

There are at least three problems that come with constricting salvation to the afterlife.  First, it usually turns Christianity into a religion of requirements.  If Christianity is mostly about getting to heaven because you are threatened with not getting there, then what are the rules; what are the requirements?  That gets very "me-focused."  It's up to me to jump the right hoops to qualify.  As the Presiding Bishop said, "it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."

Secondly, salvation as a ticket to heaven separates humanity, often cruelly, into an in-group and an out-group.  I know a dear family who sabotaged their daughter's engagement to a fine, church-going young man because he was not Church of Christ, and they believed only members of their church could be saved.

And the third problem is that focusing on the afterlife steals our focus from the real meaning of salvation, the transformation of this world and ourselves.

What is salvation?  Biblical scholar Marcus Borg offers an answer in his fine book The Heart of Christianity. 
"Salvation is:
    Light in our darkness
    Sight to the blind
    Enlightenment
    Liberation for captives
    Return from exile
    The healing of our infirmities
    Food and drink
    Resurrection from the land of the dead
    Being born again
    Knowing God
    Becoming "in Christ"
    Being made right with God ("justified")

In the Bible, salvation is all of the above." 

Very few of the Biblical metaphors for salvation are exclusively Christian.  Jesus fed, healed, and loved all, regardless of religion or culture.   Borg notes, "All of the early Christian communities of which we know – were communities of bread as well as Spirit.  Food and Spirit, bread and breath: the sharing of the necessities of life in a new community...”

Borg is right when he says, “The Bible is not about the saving of individuals for heaven, but about a new social and personal reality in the midst of this life...  Salvation is about life with God, life in the presence of God, now and forever."