It was a Sunday morning, a young lady in the church where I attended was invited to share her “testimony”.[1] She had recently been accepted to study at the Bible College where I would later be invited to teach and in a question/response format the pastor wanted her to share her story of how she arrived at this decision. On the platform her excitement was palpable. Perhaps as a warmup the pastor started by asking when she got “saved?” It is a stock like question in the evangelical/Pentecostal architype. To be “saved” or “born again” generally necessitates you have a specific date when you became a Christian. It is often described as a crisis moment. The informal liturgy behind this moment has had many variables but at its core it rests on an act of repentance and an affirmation of a belief statement (accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior) and is often in the form of a prayer. But in all cases the candidate should know the date of the transformation.
Unfortunately for the pastor in this instance her response did follow accepted protocols. With a complete lack of self-awareness, she responded with the exuberance of someone clearly committed to following in the footsteps of Jesus, “no I don’t know when it happened, it seems like I have always been saved.” I smiled inwardly. I may have loved her answer, but it was not the answer the pastor was pining for, and it showed on his face (today some 30 years later she works full time as a military chaplain).
In our (Pentecostal/evangelical) tradition, the ideal salvation narrative is a Damascus Road[2] experience. Following the four-step program (see previous post) we are expected to know the day and hour of that conversion experience notwithstanding that the word “conversion” is used only once in the Bible (Acts 15:3).
Growing up in the church the mode of conversion varied but the emphasis was always about “faith not works” (we were not like the Catholics so we thought). But once one is considered among the faithful the new believer was required to work vigorously to keep it (salvation) because being shown the exit was always a possibility[3].
In my first pastoral position in Quebec, I inherited an English congregation of Presbyterians while pioneering a French Pentecostal church. It was a unique situation. My Presbyterian folks taught me to love the church but invariably when I traveled outside our town and explained amongst Pentecostals that I doubled as a Presbyterian minister minus the clerical robes[4], I was asked, “but are they born again?” In other words, are they “really saved.” Do they have a date when their life was changed? Or do they attend church out of a sense of duty or ritual?
I confess as a young graduate out of Bible College, it confused me at first. Nothing about this church resonated with my childhood church experience. I knew little about the church calendar[5] infant baptism,[6] or the idea a hymn could have more than one melody 😊. And if you asked the congregants if they were “born again,” you would have been greeted with quizzical looks not unlike Nicodemus in John 3:4. But if you asked if they were saved that was a different question. And on that account, there was no question. Our music was lousy, the preacher (me) was barely competent, but their faith was golden, and they kept coming back.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the concept of original sin leads to an exercise of crisis management. Afterall did not the Prophet Habakkuk write, “(God) your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing.” (Hab 1:17a) And did not Jeremiah affirm “For thus says the Lord: Your hurt is incurable, your wound is grievous…because your guilt is great, because your sins are so numerous. Why do you cry out over your hurt? Your pain is incurable. (30:12-17). On first reading the messages are grim, God is angry. Our original sin leads to eternal damnation. And were it not for Christ on the cross, God has forsaken all humanity. It seems logical that our only hope in salvation is recognising what Jesus did on the cross to assuage God’s ire and if we believe on this message, we can be saved.
Jesus did not die on the cross to change God’s mind about us, Jesus dies on the cross to change our minds about God. Brian Zahnd
But in response the prophets Habakkuk and Jeremiah say, “read on.” As for Habakkuk, he responds to God and asks, “so God why do you then look on the treacherous and are silent when the wicked swallow,” and likewise Jeremiah concludes, “God says your wounds are incurable so God will restore health to you and your wounds God will heal.”
Pastor and writer Brian Zahnd says it simply “Jesus did not die on the cross to change God’s mind about us, Jesus dies on the cross to change our minds about God.”[7] God is after us.
In the Gospel of Luke, the story is told that Jesus sent out 70 disciples in groups of two[8] like sheep among wolves to do four things. (Luke 10)
1. Pronounce Peace on the households they encounter
2. Accept any hospitality offered which meant eating what was put before you (seems simple but not when you consider how what you eat defined your identity as did who you ate with)
3. When opportunity presents itself cure the sick and
4. announce that the Kingdom of God is near.
When they returned and reported what had happened one of them a lawyer, asked Jesus,
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Or in today’s vernacular what must I do to get saved.)
“We did what you asked but is there something more that is required. Is there something else I must do to get in - inherit eternal life that is?”
“We announced peace. We made some amazing new friends. We told people the kingdom of God is near. People were cured of illness…is that it? Is there a form we should be filling out? Do you have a sinner’s prayer somewhere we should be using to lead people through to salvation?” Do we get a certificate, well done, you passed?”
So then Jesus asked,
“What is written in the law? What do you read there?
Our Lawyer answered, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. (Deut. 6, Lev 19:18)
And Jesus said to him, you have given the right answer; do this and live.
We might have expected Jesus to say “there is nothing you need to do, because you simply need to believe. “By faith are you saved,” (where faith is an assent to a certain set of doctrines). Believe that you are a sinner, believe that I am the Messiah, God’s only son, that I have been sent for you and you will receive eternal life. (John 3.16) Is that not the verse that billboards announce?
Apparently however, at stake for the lawyer was not a doctrine of right belief but a course of action based on love. I am not anti-belief. Beliefs exist along a continuum from things that are little more than an educated guess to things at the opposite spectrum that some live and die for. However, when we use the word belief in connection to God, we need to understand we are talking about a construct of God – which is always finite. A conversation starter not ender.
And as a starter I have come to understand salvation is not dependent on right belief about God rather it is in a loving God who is in love with us and who has never stopped loving or pursuing us. Salvation is not for some future glory whatever that might look like. It starts here and now as we walk not run moving forward, towards the horizon of the Kingdom of God, lifting and setting down each foot in turn, never having both feet off the ground at once. And perhaps surprisingly as we walk, the horizon constantly expands. And then what do we do? We continue to humbly work out our salvation sometimes with beliefs about God, and sometimes with experiences with God.
In an anthology titled, How my mind has Changed Richard Mouw, an evangelical social ethicist, and a contributing author remembers reading J.B. Phillips’s book Your God is too Small. “In the 1960s I came to see that my understanding of God had been too interwoven with racism and nationalism…the 80s gave me the opportunity to think about how patriarchal assumptions have distorted the doctrine of God. Obviously…those theological lessons …are subject to ongoing reflection. But if I had to choose the variation on Phillips’s title that best captures my most recent exercises in corrective theology, it would be your God is too fast.”[9]
At graduation in my college yearbook (1978), we were required to write a small blurb that would accompany our picture. It was subject to editing. Most of the students included a favorite Bible verse. Mine had none. Instead, it said “He (Me) has been learning to take one step at a time, trusting God to lead…” It was all well and good, but my original submission included the word “patience.” Unbeknownst to me the editor(s) chose to drop the word. To be truthful in 1978 I probably did not fully understand or appreciate that word. If I did, I would have fought to keep it included. 46 years later what must I do to have life (salvation)? Patiently walk in love with God, myself and my neighbour and to borrow a phrase from Hillel the elder, “and the rest is commentary.”
[1] In the Pentecostal circles of my youth, testimonies were a regular feature of the Sunday service. As a teenager in Newfoundland the testimony service was largely an open mic situation where people would share something about what God had done or was doing in their lives. Sometimes the liturgy would last up to an hour and they could be wildly entertaining, usually prompting the leader of worship to begin a song to sing somebody back down into their seat. With time the open mic disappeared but a pastor might call someone forward with a specific testimony to be heard publicly.
[2] A reference to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus persecuting Christians where he is confronted by Jesus who asks Paul, “Why do you persecute me? Paul, the story is told makes a 180 change in direction. Ironically in its context the confrontation and change in Paul’s mandate is closer to a “calling” than a crisis conversion experience.
[3] In my youth the danger of “backsliding” and the need for a fresh “dedication,” or “altar time” or a “reborn again” experience kept the church altars filled. The ultimate threat of course was blaspheming the Holy Spirit for which there was reportedly no return. This was a problem because no one seemed to know what exactly constituted blasphemy in this case. Nonetheless it kept especially mischievous and sometimes rebellious youth in check. If you were of a more reformed bent, “once saved always saved” was your lifeline unless of course you were never really saved in the first place which landed you in the same place as everyone else. Bottom line security was a myth. If your parents did not really have eyes in the back of their head, apparently God did and neither loving kindness or patience were God’s strengths.
[4] I was asked by one of the elders if I wanted him to get me the appropriate robes. I declined but I honestly at the time did not know what they were.
[5] I knew about Christmas and Easter. With the Presbyterians I learned about Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost and perhaps my favourite: Ordinary Days (Question: why do so many Pentecostal churches virtually ignore Pentecost Sunday?)
[6] Since I was the only English church within the vicinity, I did perform one infant baptism during my time In Port Cartier, Quebec.. This was well before the age of the internet so I could not google “how to perform an infant baptism,” nor did I have access to a library and research what is an infant baptism? Or why I should not be doing this? In the end I did the best I could and made something up. Prayed for the child, and the family and everyone seemed happy. Is that child’s eternal destiny in question because either I did not perform the ritual correctly or because infant baptisms do not really count (as I was taught to understand at the time) I think not.
[7] Brian Zahnd, Sinner’s in the Hands of a Loving God, (Waterbrook, 2017):85.
[8] In days of Noah, salvation was achieved by bringing living things inside two by two, now these disciples were given the mandate to leave two by two to reap not sow.
[9] Richard J. Mouw, How My Mind Has Changed, eds. James M. Wall & David Heim (Eerdmans, 1991):24.
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