No more salvation
No one is coming to save you. Why? Because you don’t need salvation. You need realization. Realization that there’s no eternal damnation that you need to be saved from. Realization that there’s no God sitting on some throne in the sky, watching your every move, judging you, waiting to see if you pass or fail. Realization that you were born into or persuaded into a system that needed you to believe there was something inherently wrong with you, and conveniently they had the one and only solution.
As I have written about the last couple posts, the reason mainline Protestantism and other forms of progressive Christianity are on the ropes is not because they’re too liberal, advocating for compassion and justice. No, the problem isn’t the “progressive” part, it’s the “Christian” part. It’s the Christianity that doesn’t make sense to people.
The quote above is from a recent video by young man named Logan Barone. Barone grew up in a fundamentalist household and intended to become a preacher himself. But a time of searching and discovery led to a spiritual awakening and abandonment of fundamentalist Christianity. He studied the Christian mystics and Asian spiritualities and began practicing meditation. As his website states:
This spiritual path allowed him to experience the presence of the divine within the depths of his being, shifting his understanding from mere intellectual knowledge to a profound, experiential wisdom.
The video quote is an obvious rejection of the essentials of fundamentalism. But what progressive Christians often ignore is that such ideas remain the boilerplate beliefs of Christianity generally. Such notions rattle around in the still “official” ancient creeds. They are the foundation of the basic Christian practices of worship and personal piety. Until that changes, Christianity, even in its progressive forms, will continue its downhill slide.
In my comment on Barone’s video, I called it a “spiritual manifesto.” I then said, imagine if this video was shown in churches everywhere (it’s only 4 minutes long) and the minister just stood up when it was over and said, “Let’s discuss.” Or in the case of my denomination, how about showing at our next national assembly and then tell everyone, “Talk about this with your neighbor.”
If Barone’s statement is taken seriously (as I do), on paper it blows traditional Christianity out of the water. “No one is coming to save you. Why? Because you don’t need salvation.” Pulling out the “fundamentals” Barone identifies brings down the whole house of cards of 4th century orthodox Christianity. Its creeds, doctrines, sacraments, prayers, hymns, and liturgy collapse like deflated balloons. And the hierarchical clericalism which made it all work is suddenly without a purpose and its clerics without a job.
But for mainline churches, Barone is simply pointing out the elephant in the room. Which is, that most people long ago stopped taking such ideas seriously. Consider Christmas and Easter. They are the premier worship events of liturgical churches and encapsulate the core belief in Jesus as savior of the world. This is the “born, died, rose” structure of the creeds. Churches used to be filled for these festival worship celebrations. But not anymore.
What happened? People stopped believing the Christian story. Yet Christmas and Easter have taken on a life of their own in popular culture. Without the specifically Christian religious framing, or going to church, they have become symbols and celebrations of spiritual truths and the mysteries of life and death. Church leaders bemoan this change but they’re not paying attention. Modern secular Christmas and Easter testify to the continuing need and desire for a spiritual dimension in people’s lives.
Historical turning points are always somewhat arbitrary. But I date the moment when the absurdity of Christianity’s fundamental beliefs went public to the Scopes Monkey Trial, which marks its hundredth anniversary this summer. Fundamentalists at the time doubled down and dug in their heals defending their beliefs. But what did mainline churches do? They hid in an embarrassed silence and have remained there ever since.
Then and since there have been many voices within the church calling it out for its nonsensical doctrines, but they have been ignored. In recent decades, biblical scholars and church historians have made it abundantly clear that forgiveness of sins was not a significant part of Jesus’ ministry and that the sin forgiveness operation codified in the 4th century was a self-serving business for the church and the empire.
What was Jesus about? Today we know there is no indisputable answer to this question. But I agree with those who say that Jesus’ purpose wasn’t to provide a way for people to become right with God. Rather, it was to wake people up to the fact that they were right with God now. In Luke, Jesus says that God’s reign isn’t coming in some mythical future because “the kingdom of God is within you.” This is the “good news” he proclaimed.
Remaking a church centered on such a Jesus is no small task. Yet mainline churches have wasted at least a hundred years during which time that renewal could have been under way. Well, so be it. Yet the need remains, not just to save these faltering institutions, but because humanity needs to rediscover its divine origin and fundamental sacred identity. Only then came we begin to climb out of the deep hole of confusion, division, and despair that modern culture has created for itself.
In short, as Logan Barone says, the church needs to get out of the salvation business. And “savior” is one of many titles Jesus’ never used or asked for which needs to go away. In the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is the first to encounter the risen Jesus. She doesn’t recognize him until he calls her by name. Her simple and loving response is “Rabbouni!” Teacher. That’s how she knew him and how he transformed her life. There is no reason why the church shouldn’t experience Jesus that way today.
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8 thoughts on “No more salvation”
Why is the idea of salvation (or the saved/lost distinction) maintained? Who invented the categories, and why? Who benefits and who does not? Perhaps it’s for reasons of control or motivation.
The reformed Heidelberg Catechism is memorably summarized as “guilt, grace, and gratitude”, i.e. “1) You’re an awful person and deserve to be punished, but 2) If you hold the right religious opinion (which just happens to be mine!), you’re in the clear, so 3) Aren’t you grateful? Then obey and get to work! ” An excellent way of getting people to do and think what you want. Admittedly, it can motivate people to do good things, so there can be something positive about it.
Something I read once from a UCC minister: “If you follow the wisdom of Jesus, it will save you from making all kinds of bad decisions”. That seems like a pretty good definition of ‘saved’.
I think it certainly was for control and motivation. As Barone says in his video, we have both been convinced we have a problem and that the church has the solution. How convenient. And I love your summation of the Heidelberg Catechism.
I don’t know the history of this very well but if you read the OT prophets, the sins they are concerned with are those of Israel’s rulers and elites. Israel is sinning because those in charge have strayed from the covenant. It’s a collective sin but even then the “ordinary folks” aren’t really the issue.
In post-exilic Israel, however, the shift is made to concern with personal morality and individual sins. My suspicion is that this is due to both the growing emphasis on the individual throughout the ancient world and to the dimming prospects for Israel as a national entity. And that shift would have happened at the formal religious level. In other words, it was the priests, scribes, etc. that began to emphasize not only individual sinning but also the need for ritual performance for the forgiveness of those sins.
Over time it just got out of control, which was the state of things when Jesus came on the scene. From my reading, I don’t think Jesus gave two hoots about the rituals of forgiveness and was, in fact, trying to set people free from all that. The so-called cleansing of the temple incident is perhaps the clearest example. The temple is supposed to be a house of prayer but you have turned it into a market place (the sin-forgiveness operation). And Jesus, at least symbolically, shuts the operation down.
And that’s the irony of what I’m writing about here. The church conveniently misses what Jesus was doing, takes Paul in Romans and runs with it, and reinstates the sin-forgiveness operation. And thus Christianity, at least functionally, becomes a very conventional ancient world religion. Its asset is that it promises everyone at least the opportunity for eternal life in heaven. But as the modern world has shown, once you lose heaven (let a lone a theistic God ruling over it) the operation comes to a screeching halt.
Very challenging times for our church leaders as they try to navigate their roles, scripture, and calling relative to their churches.
These times do present leaders and churches the opportunity to raise questions and broach issues that normally they wouldn’t address-including another look at Jesus! I would want this to happen in various strategic, tactful and respectful ways as opposed to doing nothing.
If the church is interested in staying relevant, now is a good time to face it and act in some way. I believe Jesus message is always relevant and he certainly was one who made it so. I can’t always say that about the church. So we shall see . . .
Our pastor spoke about one’s integrity and character in a recent sermon. That’s my beginning point and then I go from there relative to whatever the issue, situation, law, policy, etc. is involved. This perspective does require one to look in the mirror, to know one’s self and to identify and articulate what their values are. Not always so easy.
Thanks Reid. My immediate response to your comment about church leaders is that, as I say in my post, the church has had over a century to respond to the failings of orthodox Christianity but has done little or nothing. And I don’t see any prospect of that changing. Church leaders are so dependent on the system that they are mostly incapable of looking in the mirror and saying, “We are the problem.” As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Unfortunately, in my experience, church leaders today are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Most of them are now bureaucracy managers, so creativity and out-of-the-box thinking are not their strong suits. If something genuinely new is going to happen to keep Christianity going, I think it will be from outside the institutional walls. And wouldn’t that be amazing!
Brian McLaren has also shared that the “church” needs to think outside-of-the box and get creative!
Three cheers for Brian! But then the question is, of course, who in the church is going to do this creative thinking, and from a position where it will make a difference? In this case, “church” is just too amorphous to imagine it “doing” anything.
Thank you, Doug, for sharing another voice with us. Your work and perspectives are as important as his.
Thanks John. Barone is pretty sharp and seems to be getting a following among other disaffected Evangelicals.