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I recently had a conversation with a good friend about just what it means to experience “salvation” in the Christian sense. At no point did we stop and remark, one to another, “I bet most people could care less about this conversation.” We probably should have.
A goal I have in writing is to put some skin around our flapping jaws.
So let’s start with this word “salvation”.
The Greek word is something, the Hebrew word is something else. If you really care about what those two ancient words are you most likely already know them so congratulations are in order–well done. Now try to go about sharing that information in a way that makes you a less exemplary jackass (speaking as an exemplary jackass).
There are three ways in which “salvation” is used that probably merit mention and then some connective tissue should be either clipped or grafted in.
1. The way Christian sub, folk and pop culture use the term: #heavenbound #blessed #getouttahellfreecard #momansionsinheavenlessproblems #gotsavedatchurchcamp #baptism #pearlygatesbitchezzzzzzzzzz
Full disclosure: I have boiled salvation down to the basic implication of those terms at multiple times in my life both in practice and proclamation. Salvation in loads of Christian circles eventually revolves around one’s personal standing in regard to future transcendental experience. Put plainly: will you go to heaven…OR NOT! There are two byproducts of this functional understanding of salvation. The first is that it’s personal. That’s not quite exact. It is exclusively personal–ahh that’s more precise and more terrifying. It is up to you. John Bunyan wrote an awful little book roughly 7000 years ago (estimate) in which a Christian named Christian (my grandpa used to name is dogs “Dog” and his horses “Horse” for what it’s worth) had to overcome an enormous amount of challenges to reach the literary stand-in for heaven. Salvation was heaven and reaching heaven required a solo trek. The second byproduct is that the line of demarcation between salvation and it’s opposite (damnation I guess, but that sounds quite similar to “tarnation” which is fun and damnation shouldn’t make me giggle so we’ll say “not salvation”) is easily transgressed. Some in the Christian sub-group that believes in free will suggest that a person’s bad behavior can spoil their salvation. I’ve had people tell me that suicide, because it’s murder, removes a person’s chance for salvation. Wait. Really? Some Christians who believe in predestination adhere to the idea that salvation is a whim of God and nothing more. It’s your personal salvation, but it is dependent on the kind of day God is having.
Is that the best way to think of salvation? It doesn’t seem that way.
In a biography of Jesus called Luke Jesus is confronted by and later celebrates with a miniature tax collector (he collected regular size taxes he just happened to be a smaller guy, I can see how that would be confusing). At the end of hanging out with this dude Jesus says “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9). Well this pumped the house way the hell up because it knew that it could now go to heaven, and that would make it the first house ever in heaven so it would be a for-real trendsetter. Jesus was obviously referring to the people who inhabited the house or the household. However none of them floated off to heaven according to the story. There are a few stories like that in the bible because the bible is dope but this is not one of them. Instead apparently everyone just sat around and thought, “wow, well that’s good news”. Unless when Jesus said “salvation” he didn’t simply mean “go to heaven someday”.
What if Jesus was declaring that this family was now included in something real and dynamic and animating in the present tense? Jesus was making clear his belief that this family was now in the covenant. The covenant was a relationship God initiated with people that stretched across generations. God rectified it and remade it countless times. Sometimes it seemed incredibly exclusive and demanding (cut your penis if you love me!) and sometimes it seemed embarrassingly inclusive (someday the barren woman will have loads of kids, so many kids she has to constantly re-stake her tent–God is the woman in this metaphor found in the biblical book of Isaiah). The covenant was far less about God granting you special access to the champagne room and more about God’s promise to accompany you every. single. day.
The Old Testament is lousy with references to folks begging God for salvation in the immediate not the eventual. Which sounds familiar. Because that’s how people talk about salvation when they aren’t speaking in a religious context.
Recently I had a conversation with my wife (that’s two recent conversations with two different people–that’s called conversational diversity) in which I started listing people and things that I believed quite literally saved my life in the past year. I started with her, not because I was pandering but because it’s the truest thing I’ve ever said, and listed friends in Phoenix and Portland and Indiana and my parents and some cousins and my kids and a good friend who hyphenates her last name because she’s a badass feminist like that and our good friends who have known us since before I had any identity to tarnish and decided to love me after I had damn near caused the corrosion of the identity I had. These people saved my life. There is no doubt in my mind. There is a deep and gross and perfect holiness in that. I feel like there is a power and a gentleness accompanying me every. single. day. because of the way in which these people loved me in a year of poison and shame and failure.
I believe God moved these people to demonstrate that love. I believe that God nudged them toward their kindness and honesty and hope they shared with me. Salvation came to my house over and over again regardless of the three addresses I used in ten months. Heaven is so damn big, friends, there’s no need to look up.
So if you are worried that you’re not in, remember there is a divine momma stretching that tent out just a little wider. If you think your mistakes and failures are disqualifying you please heed the words of a one-time murderous religious fanatic that there isn’t anything you’ve done or darkness you’ve walked through or horror you’ve experienced that separates you from the love of God in Jesus. If you still feel as though you aren’t “in” remember that when a former prince and shepherd and refugee leader taught about the covenant he reminded everyone that it wasn’t across the sea or miles away or even up in heaven, but instead was at your door and in your life already.
Salvation is in your midst.
“Heaven is so damn big, friends, there’s no need to look up.”











