The Language of Getting Saved

Earnest evangelicals are always fond of announcing to the world the success of their efforts.  An event will be held, and it will proudly be announced afterwards:  "People got saved."

I have always struggled with that language.

That's not because I don't see salvation as the goal.  This world is a broken, shattered mess, as are the lives of those who are caught in it's brokenness.  The path of grace and hope taught by Jesus of Nazareth is the way out of that mess.  Period .  Embracing Him and affirming Him as the One whose nature and Spirit define your existence...that's the whole point of being Christian.  You know, Him being our Lord and Savior and all.  That matters.  It's the living meat and blood and bones of our faith.

But there is in the classical evangelical phrase "getting saved" a presumption of finality that just has always rung hollow.   Pop up at the altar call, all weepy just like yer s'pposed to be, and badda boom, badda bing, it's done.  You've done it!  You're saved! 

Having been around the church for a while, I know this is...well...it's kinda sorta not true.  In fact, it's not true at all. 

I've watched as people have made that commitment, only to turn around and live lives that bear no resemblance whatsoever to their claim that Jesus is their Lord and Savior.   That at one point you felt you were "saved" means jack-diddly-nothing if your life following that moment does not affirm it by radiating the deep selfless grace we know in Jesus.    More painfully, I've watched folks come to the faith, brimming with hope and eagerness, and then watched as the petty bickering and whispering bitterness of human beings in the thing we call church have shattered that hope, and watched them fall away. 

It has also, to be frank, always seemed the teensiest bit presumptuous.  I would not make that statement about myself, because it's not my decision.  The measure of my rightness with God does not lie with me, or with how I feel.  Sure, I live towards the hope of my salvation.  But I know that I have not yet stood before the One who has the right to make that call.  Until I hear that "well done, good and faithful servant," or perhaps, "that'll do, Dave, that'll do," I'm not going to claim the right to make that call.

As I've thought about it, though, it seems that viewing that moment of commitment as "getting saved" is a bit like that moment you "get married."  Meaning, it's a moment that can have tremendous importance if the life that follows it is an affirmation of what was committed to that day.   For a couple looking back across a long life, across struggles and tears and laughter and children and grandchildren, saying, "that was the day we got married" carries a potently rich and joyful meaning.

For John Edwards, or for Britney Spears, the meaning of the phrase, "that was the day we got married" is rather different.  Either deeply painful or meaningless, depending.  Commitments can be made on a whim, or out of momentary passion.  Even commitments that once meant something can fall apart, frayed by neglect and the world's whirling distractions, or broken by betrayal.

Thinking of it this way gives me a bit more insight into why the term "getting saved" bears such freight among evangelicals.  That moment that commitment is affirmed is not the beginning of it, and not the end of it, and theologies that assume that are just plain ol' wrong.

But it is, nonetheless, important.

Beloved Spear Bible Puzzler: The Chosen

My discarded sermon concept for this week came in my reflections on Luke's story of the teaching of the Lord's Prayer. In keeping my message nice and simple and straightforward with a memorable takeaway, I neglected to pitch out this little Calvinist puzzler:

In Luke 11:1-13, Jesus presents his approach to prayer. That involves an attenuated Lord's Prayer, followed by a statement on the value of persistence, followed by the assertion that the thing we are to seek in prayer isn't bling or success, but the Holy Spirit. It's clear that what matters is the intent underlying prayer, a desire for connection and meaning that stirs an individual to seek after and pursue relationship with God.

As I reflected on that desire for the Holy Spirit during my sermon prep, I found myself wondering about the theological tautology that seems implied in this section. Desire for God is, I would hold, a gift of the Spirit. But if only those who are stirred by the Spirit seek the Spirit, and it is the seeking of the Spirit that is necessary for humankind to be in right relationship with God and one another, that seems to create a closed circle of engagement with the Creator. Almost, it seems, to the point of necessitating the use of terms like the "elect."

My Bible study on Sunday wrassled with this one for a bit, and folks came up with several interesting responses and reactions. I managed to avoid the use of the term prevenient, despite having spent seven years at a Methodist seminary.

What thinkest thou?

Presbyterian Universalism

We Jesus people are, as the Apostle Paul once said, supposed to pray without ceasing. Folks in my denomination aren't necessarily always the best at that. To make up for it, one of the things that we Presbyterians do without ceasing is research, research, research. We're constantly examining ourselves to see who we are, how many of us there are, and what we believe. Surveys from the Presbyterian Research Service arrive on my desk with impressive frequency. Sometimes this can be a tiny bit on the organizationally onanistic side. "It needs more research" is one of those things that folks in my home town say when they really and truly want to guarantee that nothing real gets done. But other times, as with so much constructive self-examination, it can surface interesting insights.

Which, of course, call for further research.

One of the more challenging findings of our recent collective self-exploration came from an ongoing survey of 5,000 Presbytypes. This particular polling of the group examined our religious preferences and theological predilections. In it, 36% of Presbyterians indicated that they did not believe that only Christians would be saved. It's a minority, true. But only three percentage points separate this minority from the plurality of Presbyterians (39%) who hold the more traditionally orthodox position. More interestingly, the numbers shifted as you polled Presbyterian pastors, with a significant plurality (45%) of Presbyterian pastors not limiting salvation to Christians.

I am, of course, part of that forty-five percent. With a Jewish wife and Jewish kids, that's not really much of a surprise. But I am also not a universalist. Let me endeavor to explain.

Universalism, meaning the theological movement within Christianity that arose in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, is the assertion that everyone is ultimately right with God. God is love, so the infinitely loving and gracious Creator's intent is that every creature will be reconciled to God. This theme in Christian thought goes way back to the third century, to such early Christians as Clement and Origen.

But while I know from faith that God is love, I also can't honestly look at what Jesus taught and see grounds for a universalistic faith. Our actions and what we believe mattered to Jesus...or else, quite frankly, there'd be no reason for Jesus to have been going on and on about repentance and the Kingdom of God. Jesus is not just one option in a great new age buffet of spirituality, in which whatever path you choose is fine so long as you're into it. I know Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He definitively establishes what it means to be in right relationship with God. Christ's Way is the only Way. Those who live and believe in ways that do not conform to the transcendent love of Other that He taught and enfleshed are ontologically SOL.

In that sense, I am theologically orthodox, up to and including having a rather more vigorous sense of the reality of hell than most of my progressive brethren.

But then things get...nuanced. Where Jesus teaches about what it means to follow him, it's clear that there's more to it than just swearing fealty to a monarch so he won't kick your butt. We don't just follow Jesus around and obey his commands like a puppy hoping to get tossed a salvation treat. What we're called to do is be inwardly transformed by God's grace, and in our actions be conformed to the love that underlies the purpose of all sentient life.

And while the boundaries of our purpose are clearly delineated by Jesus, anyone who pulls their head out of their presuppositions and actually looks at the human creatures around them will see that Way being lived out by folks who aren't formally Jesus people.

There are Muslims who welcome you into their home and treat you like family. There are Jews who care for you when you're sick. There are Hindus who'll feed you when you're hungry. There are atheist doctors who go into the deep back-country of the Sudan and save the lives of children. If you have a heart that discerns, you'll sense that many of these souls aren't doing this out of self-serving obligation, which is the essence of "salvation by works." They're doing it because love for the Other rises up from within.

They are doing it because the Way for which they were made moves in them, even if they don't grasp it as such. Seeing that familiar grace at work, I cannot believe for a moment that Christ would have anything other to say to those surprised souls than "Well done, good and faithful servant."

While universalism isn't Christian, what Jesus taught and lived and died for was radically universal.

Reezus Reist Ris Ry Rord Rand Ravior

Why wouldn't our lickity pals be able to chase that frisbee through the pearly gates? A heaven without our furry friends would seem like rather less than a delightful place.

But that doesn't mean that there might not be folks out there whose theology is not..umm...dog friendly. As I fished around in my noggin for a hypothetical reason some compulsive Calvinist might deny eternal reward to a pup, I was only able to come up with one. So, here goes:

For many Christians, it is axiomatic that a prerequisite for entry into heaven is professing faith in Jesus as one's Lord and Savior. In fact, that's a pretty standard refrain for those who would consider themselves pure-bred orthodox. If faith in Jesus is a necessary prerequisite for salvation, then dogs and cats and sea monkeys are pretty much out of luck. Just getting Ms. Barkerton not to poop on the rug is hard enough. But getting her to speak and...believe in the salvific power of Jesus Christ? I'm not sure that even the most dedicated megachurch doggie training ministry could pull that one off.

From that radical position, salvation is two things. First, it is intensely anthropocentric. Meaning, about humans, kids. True, deep and right relationship with the Creator is only something that applies to humankind, which is made in the image of God. Other creatures, being less Goddy, are just SOL. Second, the fulfillment of that right relationship with our Creator can only be worked through faith in Jesus Christ. As animals...even the smarter ones...are not capable of having that faith, they're presumably just consigned to nonexistence. Their earnest howling and meyowling isn't part of the heavenly choir.

If your pastor is a heartless pharisaic sunnavabeetch, this is what he'll tell your children when your dog dies. Should that be even a remote possibility, I recommend finding another church.

But this theological position...which is the only one I could come up with...has within it a major flaw. Beyond it's obnoxiousness, I mean. If we are being truly orthodox about the purpose of Christ's saving work among us, we understand that work as undoing the brokenness that was wrought in the Fall. From that second creation story in Genesis, humankind drifted out of the perfect awareness of our place in Creation and with our Creator. We ate of the knowledge of evil...for we already knew the good...and drove ourselves from the Garden. By we, I mean "human beings." From a strictly Biblical perspective, there is no evidence that any other creature other than the serpent shares in our fallen state.

Dogs aren't fallen creatures. Neither are gerbils or hamsters. I'm not so sure about some cats, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And if animals are not fallen, then they are not in need of reconciliation and restoration to be what God meant them to be. We're messed up, sure. We find all sorts of ways to not be the gracious, just, and loving beings we are intended to be. But they already are what they were intended to be. As such, there is no doctrine of sin that could meaningfully apply to them. And if that's the case, well, there's no reason that the pets of even the most rigidly orthodox can't join them in the hereafter.

Of course, this is all working within the framework of orthodox Christian thinking. Though I buy it in part, I'm...well...not quite that person.

So next post, I'll get around to presenting my own spiritual sense of this pressing, pressing issue. ;)

The Definitive Teaching About Dogs and Heaven

There's been a little bit of lull in my blogging lately. And my Facebookin'. And, in fact, across much of the other non-essential activities of my existence. The reason for that is the introduction into our household of a little scampering bundle of lickity affection. After forty-one orbits around the sun, and a full year of lobbying from my nine year old, I have a dog for the very first time.

Ellie is an eight week old blend of Golden Retriever and Standard Poodle. She eats, she sleeps, she runs in crazy little circles. I haven't been this focused on feeding schedules and their resultant output since my younger son was a tot. It's not as intense, as she's far lower maintenance than an equivalent toddler. She's tiring, but in an utterly-worth-it sort of way. I am, as the missus puts it, totally smitten.

In one of those synchronous events, one of the blogs I feed pitched out a musing about dogs the other day. It's the blog of a leader of one of the most ferociously hard-core conservative cells within my denomination. Carmen tends to look for things that trouble her in the church, signs of liberality and progressivism and the creeping influence of secular/Wiccan/socialist/French heresies. Here, though, she was "going after" a church that allows dogs in it's services. It seemed tailor-made for harrumphing. Not taking worship seriously! Not showing respect to the orderly praise of the Creator of the Universe! Only, try as she might, she couldn't quite bring herself to get into high dudgeon about it. Because she..well..she loves dogs. It's hard to get all ornery about them, even if being ornery is your favorite hobby.

The conversation that followed among her commenters surfaced the classic question asked by every earnest 12 year old: Does little Barky go to heaven? One of her readers said no, for reasons that probably have to do with having presuppositional apologetics beating in their chest where their heart should be. But the majority (true-believing conservatives all) said, um, maybe. Probably. It'd be nice if they did. That's not a good enough answer, though. In my capacity as the Pastor Who Spends Way Too Much Time Thinking About Things (tm), I will now offer up the definitive Christian answer to that question: Yes.

Why yes? Well, let me elucidate. First, from scripture.

The Bible doesn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time talking about the eternal lives of canines, felines, gerbils, and hamsters. For some reason, this probably didn't seem like the highest priority for an ancient Semitic people. But as we look at how creatures are directly approached in the Hebrew Scriptures, it's clear that there are some moral and spiritual obligations towards the animals in our care. From the Torah, we hear in the 10 Commandments that the Sabbath is to be kept sacred by all. A day of rest is to be given not just to those who are part of Israel, but also to the stranger in the land and the bondservant...and to the animals. This assertion of care for the well-being of domestic animals is repeated in the Exodus teachings about the value of the Sabbath. Critters get included in.

Now, some might say this is simply utilitarian. You got to keep 'em rested, so they can work harder and/or taste better. There is no spiritual component to this, some might say. But in the Writings, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes speaks directly to the question of the spirit behind the inscrutable eyes of your cat. The answer, from this wisest of the wise souls in the Bible, is that there is no difference between humankind and animals. We are all creatures of earth. We are all animated by the same breath.

So on the infrequent occasions that the Bible teaches directly about the non-human beings around us, it seems to point to the strong possibility of animals sharing in whatever our eternal destiny may be.

But there are deeper Christian theological principles at play here too...which I'll deal with in my next post.

Fighting That Nasty Little Inner Pharisee

Following the successful launch of a great new service program by a member of the church, I trundled off to our local clothing closet this Saturday to grudgingly put in my monthly court-mandated community service hours. Though the lawyers for the Apple store did push for hard time. Hey, it's not my fault I thought that "open source" meant "feel free to take what you want."

Well, actually, no. I really enjoy charitable work and volunteering. It is work that clearly serves a purpose, that directly benefits those who are struggling and in need. In this case, putting clothes on their bodies. It is work utterly free of mammon's coercion, done for no other purpose than the love of it and of others. It is work that fulfills a really rather specific faith mandate to provide material care, and to be a part of the Gospel process of liberation from suffering. I'm not quite a Salvationist, like the folks over at the Salvation Army whose theology mandates volitional care for others. But I'm close. Church needs to proclaim the Gospel and transform people's lives through that gracious message. I'm down with that. But also and at the same time, it must express itself in practical care for others, in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting the prisoner. If it doesn't do both, it isn't really church. If it does, it is rich and Spirit-filled.

My struggle yesterday was that I didn't bring that gracious Spirit with me when I went. For the first four years of my ministry, my congregation was so wrapped up in Korean psychodrama that it just couldn't seem to muster any service work at all. My outlaw fraternity did more community outreach than my congregation, which ain't sayin' much. Outside of giving cash from the endowment, we did jack-diddly-nothing. Finally, this last year, I started pressing for us to regularly run a food drive, which we've sort of done. I also started encouraging the church to volunteer at the local faith-based clothing closet.

There was some initial involvement. But for the past four months, a grand total of two folks have joined me in doing it. Once it was a kid doing it because he had to. The other time it was my Jewish son, who likes volunteering, and is eager to join me whenever he can.

I'm aware I'm not reaching out enough. Talking about it with lay congregational leaders, talking about it during bible studies, preaching sermons on the necessity of service, announcing it during services, highlighting it in email newsletters, and pitching it through Facebook event invites and notifications...these aren't enough. Only going from person to person, and asking each individual directly if they're going to volunteer every single time we're going to do it seems to work. After a wise soul told me early on that this was the only way people were going to come, I followed his advice. I did that for a while. I did that for a few months.

But there are limits to how far I'm willing to take pastoral suasion. If after over a year people have experienced it, and still aren't coming without arm-twisting, then the voluntary element of volunteering isn't real. If you don't serve with a free will, then it cannot possibly be what it needs to be. Yeah, I could keep noodging and hassling and guilting people into it. But I've never been interested in people faking it out of sense of obligation.

This leaves me with two troubling conundrums.

The first is having to admit to myself that I am the only person in the congregation who cares about this particular service opportunity. It's a bit vexing, because I really like it, I really enjoy it, and it's just a transparently good thing to do. It connects us with our community. It clothes the naked, which would seem like something we'd realize matters to Jesus. But I am self-evidently the only one who cares. Ah well. Egos are such irritating things, and try as I might, I can't always shut mine off. The church is, after all, finally doing other service work on site, through the calling of someone who has joined us in the last few months. So even if my efforts have proved fruitless, the Spirit is at work elsewhere in the church. I take some solace in that.

The second is not to allow my irritation to impede my own efforts. I personally need service ministry to be fed spiritually, but there is no point in doing it while ensconced in a dark cloud of pissiness or judgmentalism or smugness. And though I hate to admit it, it was getting to me this weekend. On the way to the clothing center, certain in the knowledge that it was, once again, just going to be me, I could feel that narsty little inner Pharisee embittering me. Judging others. Telling me that I, in my noble me-ness, should be Proud that I'm The Only One Who Gets It. But there is no Christ in such thinking. There are plenty of folks who live out their faith that way, governed by the demons of self and self-interest. It's a dark cloud of smug delusion.

So I resisted that pesky little demon. I challenged and centered myself. I reminded myself of the point of it all. I focused on the sorting and hanging of clothes the way you'd focus on a repeated prayer, losing myself completely in it. And the anger and bitterness and selfishness faded. And the clothes were sorted and set out for those in need.

It really is most effective.

Eve's Fallen, and She Can't Get Up

Some recent blog-reading among my conservative brethren has stirred up an old issue for me.

One of the more challenging things about being the progressive Anglo pastor of a congregation that is now almost entirely Korean is coming to terms with some of the cultural expectations of gender. Even among second generation Korean-Americans, there can be a deep personal and spiritual segregation between the sexes. Roles and expectations that were programmed heavily into Korean culture die hard, and drawing out the full gifts and leadership skills of the young women of my church hasn't always been easy.

This is, in large part, because the traditional cultural assumptions about women in Korean society have been given a potent theological edge by Christianity. I grew up in congregations where women were both pastors and elders, and the realization that most Christian churches in both the U.S. and the developing world have a problem with this always struck me as bizarre. But the attitude is there, and it's real. It says:

Women should be submissive to men. They should be subordinate to men. Why? Because that's the way Jesus wants it. Bible says it, I believe it, so shut up and go get me a beer. Oh, and when I was coming down for my ESPN, I noticed that little Tyler's been puking in the upstairs bathroom. You might want to deal with that. After the beer, woman.

That is, of course, not how evangelicals generally conceptualize the relationship between men and women. It's also not how their healthy traditional marriages work, and unlike many of my progressive counterparts, I'm fully aware that they can work. There are relationships in which the male plays the traditional breadwinner role and still manages to be respectful and gracious towards his wife. Problem is, the ethic of a mandated power imbalance between one half of the human race and the other just does not jibe with the foundational ethic of Christian faith. Love involves being a gracious servant to all, even to one's enemies, and requiring fifty percent of the species to be subordinate just doesn't reflect the presence of the Spirit. It is also an ethic that's repeatedly abused by those men whose desire isn't Christ, but worldly power.

So why has this way of looking at gender relations stuck around? People who feel this is a Biblical mandate root the submission of women to men in the later texts of the Epistles, in texts like Ephesians or 2 Peter. More deeply, though, they use the same core justification for their assumptions about women that can be found in the writings of Paul's disciples or the pseudo-apocalyptic Peter. That assumption goes way back, back to the very beginning.

Why are women to submit? Because they are weak. Why are they weak? Because of Eve, and because after the Fall, her punishment for shattering the relationship with God was as follows:

To the woman he said,

"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;

with pain you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband,

and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16)

There you go. God is mad at all of us for the transgression of Adam and Eve, and so men have to dig endlessly in the dirt scrounging for a living, snakes get stomped on, and women have to accept that "he will rule over you." While progressive Christians have major issue with the whole idea of our fallen nature, and cringe at passages like this one, I think it's more constructive for us to just accept the foundational argument of conservatives. That argument, in a nutshell, is that the submission of women to men is a part of our fallen nature. To which I say, sure. Yes. I believe that. I'm willing to cede that point, because in ceding it, it is logical to then ask:

Does Jesus not save women?

According to the great story of the Gospel, the purpose of Christ's life, death and resurrection was to reconcile human beings to both God and one another. For those who are moved by Christ's teachings and transformed by the Holy Spirit, the curse of the Fall is lifted. We are, in declaring Christ's Lordship over our lives, part of that great struggle to lift the yoke of all fallen "dominion, authority, and power."

And yet in the great majority of the Christian world, we Jesus people allow ourselves to be instruments of that curse over fully half of humanity. The reasons for this are primarily because of the incursion of cultural values about the role of women into the faith. That incursion is most intensely expressed in societies where women have been traditionally subordinate, but it begins, to be frank, in the Epistles. The influence of Greco-Roman culture grows strong as the early church moved further and further away from Christ. That's why the Gospels and the seven undisputed letters of Paul take a radically egalitarian stance towards women, and the later Epistles start to reflect both Roman and first century Jewish views on the roles of women.

That variance in the teaching of Scripture leaves folks who take the Bible seriously with two options. The first is to continue to embrace the cultural power imbalance between men and women. We take those texts that affirm us in that belief, and make them the lynchpin around which we approach gender. To do that, though, we must also believe that Jesus metes out uneven salvation, and that when Paul says Christ tears down the boundaries between cultures and genders, Paul was just blowing smoke. It also means we reject the servant ethic that...at least the last time I checked...ain't just for Christian ladies.

The second is to realize that there is a powerful case in Scripture for moving away from the subordination of women. We mainliners grasped this a while ago, and throughout our churches, women's voices are now heard and their leadership is recognized. It ain't perfect, but we're getting there. Unfortunately, while we've done some important stuff spiritually, we're not very evangelical about it. We too often talk about gender equality in terms of "fairness," or using the language of academic feminism.

In reality, what we are doing goes way, way deeper than that. It's a part of that great battle against human brokenness. It's about redemption, and the transformation of humanity by the presence of Christ.

The Scandal of Universality

What is salvation? Salvation comes when we stand in right relationship with God. It's a healing of the rift that exists between we selfish, solipcistic creatures and our Creator.

All of the terms and images that are used throughout the Gospels and Epistles point to Jesus of Nazareth as the One who fully manifested the self-emptying servanthood that is required if we are to conform our wills to God. He's the physical reality of the logos that underlies the universe, so woven up into who God is that parsing out where the man ends and God begins is a fools errand. Or the errand of theologians. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

More importantly, through him we come to see that this logos isn't just the disengaged Enlightenment clockmaker or the abstraction of an Aristotelian unmoved mover. Instead, Jesus expresses the logos to us as love. He has soteriological power..that means savin' power, kids...because he is God's own self-expression. He's not the Ba'al of a neo-Canaanite Trinity, sacrificed and raised by El like a subordinate mediator god in a tripartite pantheon. At his most essential, substantial level, Jesus is God.

As such, being Christian..and being saved...is less about emulating Christ and more about participating in Christ. It's not about our own heartfelt emo conviction that we've been adequately spattered with His plasma and corpuscles. It's not measured by our ability to memorize and recite scripture or the doctrinal assertions of our particular tradition.

It's measured by our participation in that love that is God the Father, which Christ expressed through his life, and which the Spirit struggles every day to manifest in us.

Word Up, Y'all

The Greek phrase "En arche en ho Logos" begins John's Gospel. It's the soaring start to John 1, and Jesus People have heard it a trillion times. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

For John of course, the Word with a capital W was Jesus. We hear that easily. It's nice and familiar. What is harder for us to do, living outside of the first century Greco-Roman world, is for us to hear the beginning of John's Gospel in the same way as the people who would first have heard it read in a small assembly of early Christians.

The term logos can be translated to mean a verbal utterance. It does mean that. However, the reason we slap a great honking uppercase Dubyah onto it has everything to do with the broader meaning of that term in the philosophical movements of that time. Logos was a term that had deep roots in Greek philosophy, having been used since the time before Socrates to describe the underlying order and nature of the universe. It can equally well be translated as "reason," or "meaning" or "thought."

During the time of the early church, it was used by the Stoic movement to describe the creative power that caused all things. The Stoics believed that fragments of that power, the logos spermatikos, resided in every human being as the power of reason.

At it's very outset, John's Gospel is making a stunning claim for Jesus...that he is, in fact, the embodiment of the underlying creative power that formed the universe. "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." If you heard that in the first century, you knew exactly what that meant. Logos. The Word.

Just as the universe was spoken into existence, Jesus is God's own self-expression, in human form. Can we call him Rabbi? Does he teach? Sure. Can we call him prophet? Does he proclaim God's justice? Yup. But the most essential assertion we make about Jesus is that Jesus is integrally woven into the Creator's intent for the universe, that he manifests that intent, that in some ineffable way he was and is that intent.

How, if at all, does this relate to the way we Christians understand salvation?

Born Again? Watchoo Talkin' 'Bout, Jesus?

Jesus never said we should be born again.

To which the logical response would be, "Well, of course he did! Look at John 3:3! 'In reply Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.' Look at John 3:7! 'You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' Pastor David, haven't you read the Bible? Just what are they teaching in seminaries nowadays?"

Greek, actually. In the Greek in which John was written, what Jesus says in the two verses above is that we must be "gennethenai aneuthen." The first word means "born," and it has a familiar root. Think "generate," or "genesis." The challenge comes with the word aneuthen, which the NIV and the KJV translate as "again."

That word occurs 31 times in our Bibles. It surfaces eighteen times in the Septuagint--that's the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was circulating at the time of Christ--and thirteen times in the Gospels and Epistles.

Of those 31 occurances, it is translated "again" only three times. Two of those are the verses we just saw in John 3. The third is in Galatians 4:9--but there it disappears into part of a two-verb construct with the verb form palin. And palin is--guess what--the most commonly used Greek term for "again." I really hope the Republican party doesn't know this.

In every other location, aneuthen is translated to mean "over," "on top," "from the beginning," or "from above." Let's take a look at seven examples from the NIV, where I've bolded the English translation:

Gen. 27:39 "...away from the dew of heaven above."
Gen. 49:25 "..who blesses you with blessings of the heavens above,"
Exodus 25:21 "..Place the cover on top of the ark.."
Job 3:4 "..may God above not care about it.."
Isaiah 45:8 "...You heavens above, rain down righteousness.."
Jeremiah 4:28 "..the heavens above grow dark.."
Ezekiel 1:26 "Above the expanse over their heads.."

Here are seven more from the New Testament:

Matthew 27:51 ".. the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom."
Mark 15:38 "The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom."
John 3:31 "The one who comes from above is above all.."
John 19:11 "Jesus answered, 'You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above'.."
John 19:23 "This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom."
James 1:17 " Every good and perfect gift is from above.."
James 3:17 "But the wisdom that comes from heaven..."

Given the dominant Biblical meaning of aneuthen, what Jesus said in that conversation with Nicodemus--despite the influence of the English translations--was not that we should be born "again."

The word we hear in scripture does not mean simple repetition. I would contend that Jesus is expressing a much more powerful spiritual truth to Nicodemus--that we should be born "from above," or born "from heaven."

So you say...so what? If he said we were to be "born from above"...so what? What possible difference does that make?"

If I were a closet Raelian, this would be the point where I'd start explaining, IN ALL CAPS AND BOLD TEXT ABOUT HOW JESUS WAS REALLY TALKING HERE ABOUT THE ALIENS!!! IT COMES FROM ABOVE!!! JESUS IS SAYING ALL CHRISTIANS MUST BE ALIEN BABIES!!!

But the transmitter implants the Presbyterian Church put in my pineal gland are still working nicely, so I won't say that.

I could also be proposing changing the term "born again," claiming that it never occurs in Scripture. But that wouldn't be valid, as the term "born again" does actually occur in the New Testament. It isn't in the Gospels, but in 1 Peter 1:23, where the Greek word anagegennemenoi is used. Ana means "again" and gegennemenoi means "y'all-are-born," so that term--legitimately translated--means "y'all-are-again-born." Think, for example, of how anabaptist means "y'all-are-again-baptized" or anakournikova means "y'all-are-again-wearing-little-tennis-skirts."

Honestly, for mature Christians, the distinction is mostly moot. Even with that verse historically mistranslated as "born again," we still know exactly what Christ was talking about from the broader context of his teachings. We are to be transformed. We are to be "born of water and the Spirit." (John 3:5) Those who have felt the Spirit moving in their lives, and whose lives have been--and are being--changed by Christ know what it means, no matter what word is used. They're feeling it. They're living it.

Nonetheless, the reality that a term that Christians have used to describe themselves for several generations has only a very tenuous root in Christ's teachings is...interesting.

It is also interesting that the words recorded in Scripture have a specific theological meaning, one that resonates with all of Christ's other teachings about the change he is bringing us. The birth that Christ describes has something to do with what is "above," which in the context of John's Gospel indicates a connection with the eternal and the heavenly realm.

Though it's a minor shift, just a single word, it does reinforce that the transformation Jesus is describing is our being born of and into our eternity.

Still Saving...Please Don't Turn off X

Most of this probably comes from my Presbyterian upbringing, but there's something I've never understood within the evangelical movement. What I find particularly baffling are statements like: "It's been six years since I was saved." Or "I got saved watching a Billy Graham revival on TV." Or harder still: "Have you been saved?"

Maybe it's because I'm running a different Spiritual OS, but ce ne computez pas. I do understand the need for powerful spiritual experiences that help define and reinforce our relationship to God. I do feel and have felt the intensity of a sudden heart-driven response to the divine presence.

But I think we're overreaching when we try to define those moments as the specific point in time when we "were saved." In fact, defining salvation in that way can be deeply counterproductive, for two reasons:

1) It's just too easy. Praise team cranking, pastor belting out the percussive alliteration, you get caught up and swept up and Badda boom! Badda Bing! I'm saved! If your spiritual growth never needs go beyond that moment, it's too easy to end up in a stunted and static faith.

2) It doesn't leave any room for the realities of our ongoing stumbling and weakness. You've been saved, gol'dangit. Justified! Sanctified! Washed in the Blood of the Lamb! Preacher said so himself when you came up to get baptized. How can you possibly be struggling? How can you possibly still be tormented by doubts?

Salvation is, instead, a life-long process of building a relationship with God, the Beloved Community, and the world around us. It is a growing, living, dynamic thing. We are, as Paul said to his dear friends in Philippi, always "working out our salvation with fear and trembling." If we approach our theology of salvation in that way, there's room for those days when prayers hang dead on our lips, or those nights when one little glass of wine somehow becomes a whole bottle, or when we find Firefox inexplicably pointed at www.scarlettjohansseninlatex.com.

Instead of viewing those stumblings as evidence that somehow gettin' saved musta not took right, we can instead see those difficult spiritual times as particularly challenging moments in our salvation walk. They are hurdles to overcome, a part of the journey, not evidence that we've deluded ourselves about God's love for us.

So to the question "Have you been saved," the only answer I can truthfully speak is, "I am still being saved."

Saving...Please Don't Turn Off X

This little aphorism buzzed in my ear today: "Salvation is not an act of the will, but its transformation."

In understanding Christ, and what he means for us, I think 'tis important for our theology of salvation to be rooted in what is real. When we Christians direct ourselves too intensely to a future heaven, or shout admonitions about coming hellfire to every passing member of the Democratic National Committee, I think we're missing the point.

It isn't that the things of our eternity don't matter. It's just that they're rooted in what we're doing right now. Salvation--and getting saved--shouldn't be conceptualized in terms of what sort of square footage your mansion in heaven will have, and whether the angels will be responsible for pool maintenance, or if the association fees will cover it. Getting saved is about changing how we live and act in this messed up, confusing, and difficult world.

It also has little to do with how deeply we ourselves believe we are saved, and more to do with how deeply we actually live into our salvation. The man who reads his Bible every night, does everything his preacher tells him, but won't speak to his gay son --is he living into his salvation? The pillar of the church who tells her spiritually struggling daughter that she needs to stop doubting and just believe in Jesus or go to hell--is she living into her salvation? They miss the point, as, I think, do so many preachers who seem only able to talk about salvation in terms of eternal damnation or salvation.

God's eternity is so great that our languages and minds can't even begin to express it, any more than a bonobo monkey can articulate it's position on stem cell research. Not that that stops Sean Hannity from trying.

Ahem.

Where was I? Oh yes--our theology of salvation. Theology, as St. Anselm described it, is "faith seeking understanding." As we find ways to express our faith, and to articulate it to a world that really does need to hear Good News, it makes much more sense to emphasize the power of God's presence to change our lives now.

It is our lives as Christians, here and now, that we need to come to understand. When we open ourselves to that Spirit moving in us, our view of the world changes. Our relationships change. Our approach to work and creation changes. We enter in to that lifelong process of "being saved," and that is a very real thing indeed.