Salvation: A Few Thoughts

Basically, as I see it, in the Christian view of things this world is decidedly not as it’s supposed to be. Predation, sickness, violence, death, racism, bigotry of all types etc., etc., are not what God desires for humanity. But sin enters the world, when humans live in their own private universes—we make ourselves into gods, and don’t give two damns about the rest of the Creation. We become “kings of our little skull-sized kingdoms” as David Foster Wallace would say. Sinners. And think of sin not just as wrongdoing, but as a kind of cosmic disorderliness (the “worm at the heart of goodness” if you will). Yet God doesn’t let go. He chooses to enter into a treaty-relationship with a tribe of slaves, brings them out of slavery, and lays before them a law (His Torah), a new way of living in the world which can be summarized as: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He brings this tribe to Canaan, and establishes them as a nation, but they continually screw up, and fail to honor their obligations to the God who freed them.  And loves them. Madly.

Still God doesn’t quit. He sends prophet after prophet to remind them of what they are supposed to be doing as a nation: honoring the Holy One’s Torah, which is love beyond measure. Eventually, because they keep not getting the point, he sends his people into exile. At the appropriate time, he brings them back out of exile, and enters a new phase in his relationship with them. Zerubbabel. Ezra. Nehemiah. The Lord keeps at it. Eventually, when His people still don’t get the message, God incarnates as a whirlwind of a rabbi from a Roman provincial backwater called Galilee. This charismatic, profoundly loving and occasionally terrifying Torah teacher gathers together a motley crew of students, preaches and heals the sick for around three years, then is tortured to death as a rebel, and buried. On the third day after his death, some of his students report seeing him alive again. The community of the rabbi’s followers comes to understand that through his horrific death, and his coming back to life, Rabbi Jesus has decisively beaten the powers of egotism, predation, sickness, entropy, death etc. and that while he is leaving them for a while, he’ll be back reconcile the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19) ---and, yes, that means the entire world (Romans 11:32)--when the time is right. 

For me, I understand myself as living in the time between the first and second comings of Jesus, and job #1 both in the “in between” and always, is: love people. Unconditionally. No bullshit escape clauses or strings attached. Love – genuine love that *actively seeks the good of the other*-- is the only thing that matters. That means, if someone is treated as lesser, go to bat for them. If someone is grieving, cry with them. If someone is happy, rejoice with them. Be there for your brothers and sisters. Help them as best you can to grow, grow yourself, and know that if the Powers That Be cut you down or crucify you, they can crucify you, but they can’t crucify Love. Because in the end, to quote 1^st Corinthians 13, “Love never fails.”