SAVED? 5/22/08
by SteveSaved! We hear the word all the time. Preachers use it in their sermons. Laypeople often use it when witnessing to their friends and neighbors. Radio preachers, especially, are always shouting at people that they need to “get saved.” It seems that nearly everybody uses the term, but not everybody who uses it knows what it really means.
I would say that in my life no belief has changed more over the years than this one. I grew up with the idea that salvation is all about the afterlife. If someone asked me if I were saved, what they were wanting to know is…do you know that if you were to die tonight, you would go to heaven rather than hell. In other words, I was taught that salvation is all about where the soul will spend eternity.
But in my study and in my experience over the last 30 years or so, I’ve come to see that salvation, biblically speaking, is not about the afterlife nearly as much as it is about THIS life!
You see, there is so much more to being a Christian than knowing you’re going to heaven when you die! That’s important, but it’s not everything, and to some people it means nothing. People who are hurting now, people who are hungry now, people who are sick now, people who are out of work now, people who don’t know how they’re going to get through the rest of the day — they’re not interested in hearing from us that when they die everything’s going to finally be OK. They need to know what Christ can do for them today, right now, in this world. How can he help them out of the mess they’re in, whether it’s their own fault or somebody else’s?
Let me tell you frankly, I think we’ve really messed up by placing so much emphasis on accepting Christ so that we’ll go to heaven when we die. We need to be telling our friends and neighbors about what a difference Jesus Christ makes in LIFE, and that salvation, biblically speaking, is about wholeness and healing now.
RSS
Steve,
I agree totally with you on this one, great thought.
Thanks, Anthony…I really appreciate regulars readers like you! Judy said she really enjoyed talking with Tammy earlier this week. Ya’ll coming this way during the summer?
Years ago, on a random overpass (like so many throughout the country), someone had painted “Jesus Saves”. Underneath it, someone else had added, “S&H Green Stamps”. Although I found this hilarious, it was outdone by a non-Christian friend who said, “Jesus saves sinners” – dramatic pause – “and redeems them for valuable prizes!” To this day, those are the first two things that come to mind, instantly, on hearing the word ‘saved’ used in any religious context. Although some ‘christian’ folk would be offended by this bit of humor, I make no apologies. ‘Saved’ has been so over-used – I’ll go so far as to say abused – that it’s lost any meaning other than it’s relationship to a particular type of person/people who call themselves ‘Christian’. Unlike ‘Band Aid’ and ‘Kleenex’, which lost their status as brand names to become the ubiquitous terms for bandage and tissue, ‘saved’ has become the calling card for street preachers and door-to-door religion peddlers. One of these days I’m *not* going to bite my tongue when someone asks, “…have you been saved?”, and I’ll reply “No, my doctor assures me that I will, to spite my best efforts, die.” or, “No, the bank wouldn’t accept me for deposit.” You know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where things are going the instant the air passes the vocal cords forming the word ‘saved’. It’s so cliche as to invite this sort of humor. Then, more recently, I mentioned the ‘valuable prizes’ quip at a breakfast of community priests/pastors (I was with my parents). After a couple giggles around the table, one said, “That’ll preach!”. I can’t say if it inspired a sermon, but it did give me pause to consider it, to think about the words outside of the cliche, and the conclusion was startling. The problem is – saved from what? The street preachers, etc., will all say ‘damnation’, or ‘hell’, if they bother to acknowledge the question at all, but this falls short. If we read the Gospels with a critical eye on Jesus’ actions, what was he saving anyone from? What is it that this man, who wouldn’t even save his own life, wanted to save us from? Simply, ourselves. So many of his followers, in his own time, were looking for salvation from Rome, and we’re still missing the point today – Jesus’ simple lessons show him saving people from themselves, not others. Not at some future time or place, but now. *We* create our own hell, *we* damn ourselves with our own behavior, no differently than the Jews of Israel in Jesus’ time. If we take Jesus’ lessons to heart, he can save us – from ourselves. And redeem us for a valuable prize – a life lived in the spirit of Christ. Why do so many insist on making it more complicated?
Bj
Good job, Berry…and great stories. What many people do not realize is that the popular conception of “saved” really means “saved from God, who is so angry because you are a sinner that he wants to punish you forever in the flames of hell!” So…Jesus’ job is to save us from God. How weird is that? Although there should be some separation in our thinking regarding Jesus and God, their attitudes must always be the same! One cannot want to kill us, and the other want to save us….