Why don't you dig a little deeper: Have I lost the plot?
This blog is more of a question to emergent theologians...in a world where religious pluralism/syncretism is increasingly more common, how are we to engage with those of a different faith?
Personal Reflection/Struggle:
So lately I've been thinking a lot about what salvation is…I mean, as Christians we so often talk about being saved or "getting" saved, being born again, regenerated or whatever you want to call it but what does that mean? Essentially…saved from what?
Is salvation something you can only get when you reach a point of intellectual agreement about who Jesus Christ is and say yes I believe that works for me too?
So all my thoughts led me to ask the crucial question again…what does my theological reflection say about the God I'm serving, what kind of picture am I painting?
If salvation is only something that happens after I go up and say a prayer then it's sort of like saying God is a halfway God isn't it? Like God loves you but only under the condition that you first agree to all this Christian stuff?
The problem is it's easy for me as a Christian to say yeah I believe but what happens to the rest of the world? Are the eternally damned because due to odd luck they were born into a religion not my own and that makes it difficult for them to agree with me. Sort of like the way I write with my right hand, and some fundamentalist left-hander telling me to write with my left? I wonder…is the kingdom of God more like typing?
So basically, if I agree with the fundamentalist point of view, then as one of my friends says:there are two bins, a heaven bin and a hell bin, and by default everybody is on a conveyor built system into the hell bin. Only when we make that conscious decision to believe in Jesus does God take his rake and rake us into the heaven bin. That's a pretty scary thought isn't…like, where is the love?
Anyway, some people would then take me to Genesis to argue from the point of view of man's own free will and us essentially putting ourselves on the conveyor belt. I don't know, it just seems that as a fish is prone to swim, humans are prone to sin. It's still a bit lacking in love if you ask me. Obviously it varies as to how you choose to interpret the creation account…Hebrew parallelism or factual history?
So I've been wondering where love and grace fits into all this and considering the possibility of such a thing as cosmic salvation through Christ. Could it be possible that if sin entered the world through one man in Adam, that in the same way , by one man Jesus Christ graces flows to all the world? What do the prophets mean when they say that many nations will flow into the kingdom of God? Are we saved only from when we make an intellectual decision, or from the moment we were born? Is life to the full only something in the far future or something we can actually experience now?
As you may see, I have no answers, only questions. I've come to the realisation that the goal of theological reflection is not to pin down any one thesis statement about God or salvation or any other concept but rather to add more colours like an artist does, to experiment with different tones and harmonies like a musician, to find better ways of relating to and understanding God. I've come to see that God who created the universe is far larger than my theological space cases which I try to fit him into.
Perhaps it is not my duty to judge or determine the eternal wellbeing of my fellow human beings but only to share the gripping narrative of the historical Jesus which invites us into fellowship with God today. Perhaps I should meet them like Bonhoeffer said as the people "they already are in Christ's eyes" and not try to mould them into my own image. If I trust that the saving is up to God and not me then maybe it would be easier to just sit down and have a conversation with someone of a different faith, to actually understand the reality of every human being bearing the image of God and to…chat?
As a disclaimer, I've not bought into universalism or new age, nor am I disclaiming those perspectives, this blog is a theological reflection which I hope will go out, reverberate into this virtual world and come back with fresh perspectives.
Test everything. Dig a little deeper than you have before.
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Salvation
Hey Ashley,
Good questions. I keep wondering about the significance of the fact that the Greek word translated as saved/salvation/etc. can also mean healing/wholeness. I wonder if being "saved" doesn't mean finding healing and wholeness? Just some more theological reflection. What u think???
Sven
Salvation
Hi Ashley
Been doing lots of thinking on this myself.
Some random thoughts:
1. Salvation can't be contingent on correct understanding. In Shusaku Endo's challenging novel Silence, there's a scene I'll always remember, where the priest comes upon these Christians who were forced to hide in the mountains/caves during the persecutions of Christians in Japan. Without Bibles or outside input, their understanding of Christianity became warped until the priest who finds them can barely recognise their Christianity. Can they be held responsible, when it's their very faith that brought them to this point? Moreover, if we boil salvation down to correct understanding, what about mentally challenged people, etc, who might not be able to develop a proper hermeneutic/etc? So I don't believe salvation is intellectual agreement with a set code of belief.
2. I've always liked Newbigin's view: exclusive in the sense of affirming the unique truth of the revelation in Jesus, but not in the sense of denying the possibility of salvation to those outside the Christian faith; inclusive in the sense of refusing to limit the saving grace of God to Christians, but not in the sense of viewing other religions as salvific; pluralist in the sense of acknowledging the gracious work of God in the lives of all human beings, but not in the sense of denying the unique and decisive nature of what God has done in Jesus Christ.
3. Paul writes in Romans that since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Humans aren't the only thing made in God's image; all the world reflects its creator. If we take that seriously, then all religions can contain truth: as people look at the world around them, they formulate a view of God, much of which we can learn from and agree with. Been reading a great book by Sue Monk Kidd about goddess religions, which can help patriarchal Christianity to rediscover feminine terms for God. Also, remember coming across a strand in Hinduism which believed in a personal, triune God who relates to humans via grace not karma. We don't have to say all religions are demon-worship and don't have to say all religions are wrong. Rather we can seek to find God in them. God is in every situation, and every religion, before we get there. As Brian McLaren pointed out when he was in Cape Town a while ago, Christianity actually embraces different words for God, as it translates the concept into the vernacular - God, Here, Nkosi, Jehovah, etc, etc. The important thing may not be what we call God, but rather how we view God.
4. Not all religions are the same. We need to maintain our ability to say that aspects of other religions are wrong; but we should probably focus on taking the plank out of our own eye first. Christianity has more than its fair share of problems, and most of those apologetic talks many of us grew up on didn't really do justice to the concepts they were trying to break down, as it's difficult to understand a concept from an outsider's perspective.
5. Do believe Jesus can add value to any other religion: Gandhi is an example of someone who benefited immensely from Jesus without becoming a Christian. For me, Jesus remains the most complete revelation we have of God; but he completes rather than replaces existing belief systems (Although none of us will ever really have complete belief systems I suppose).
Will try spell out my view of what happened on the cross in another post sometime; too tired now. Would love to hear how other people see it...
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