Salvation – An Immediate Experience Or A Constant Task?

March 3, 1985
Lakeland

The interest, support, and enthusiasm for Christian salvation religion seems more intense in Central Florida than any other place I have lived. An Assembly of God church has just opened its new building which will seat 10,000; to me, an astonishing capacity. Every week some Christian church announces a revival with a visiting evangelist and gospel musicians. The Leighton Ford Crusade is concluding an eight-day series of meetings at the Civic Center. Ford has been an associate of Billy Graham for many years. I think it’s accurate to say that SALVATION is the basic theme of these and other evangelistic meetings. The planning that has preceded the Leighton Ford meetings has been well organized – preparations have taken months. The Christian churches of the community have been largely involved. The attractive signs in patriotic red, white, and blue announcing the meetings were mounted outside almost every Christian church in the community. The financing from individuals, business groups, and churches has been largely subscribed in advance [CJW note: 198,000]. Unlike the TV evangelists, I surmise that there have been no plaintive pleas to write checks for a deficit.

The comments on the Leighton Ford meetings by two Florida Southern professors have been instructive. The meetings have not been like the old sawdust trail themes of pounding away of punishment in hell for the unsaved. The theme has been hope. The professors, Cook and Weaver, note that Ford has characterized his meetings as a proclamation, celebration, and invitation. “It has components of a ‘show,’” they write, “laughter, interaction with the crowd, talented performers, yet also seeks to go beyond these elements. It elevates theological matters to the center, but is not a forum for academic debate, for it aims at eliciting commitment and altering lives.”

Unlike the famous revivals of the 19th century, the main audience is not the unchurched, the “irreligious,” however defined. When the revival phase of American religion began, “sinners” were urged day and night by emotional preachers. The frontier was the scene of the early [revivals]. There were few churches on the frontier (frontier then: Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio). But the meetings this week in the Civic Center do not seem to be designed to appeal to the unchurched, the atheist or agnostic. Some such may have been there. But I assume, because of the extensive involvement of Christian church people, choirs, other organizations, the audience comprised for the most part persons already involved in a Christian church. Admitting that I make this observation as one who has not attended or been involved, and recognizing that what persons do may be thoroughly misunderstood if appraised wholly from the outside, it seems that this series of meetings and others like it represent re-affirmation of Christian doctrine by those already “in the fold.”

To say this is not a negative criticism. The re-sparking of enthusiasm, the involvement with thousands of other believers, the inspirational music and sermons will strengthen the believers’ allegiance to their churches. The organizers, supporters, signers, preachers can be praised for such support of belief. It would be churlish to downgrade the experience of others which may have lifted hopes and strengthened commitment.

But as one who is not in the mode of evangelistic Christian revivals, I have thought about this matter of salvation, whether it is an immediate experience or [a] constant task. Although it is not a word I use much, salvation to me is constant growth, not a quick lightning strike of immediate conversion. I have considered the definitions in the dictionary provided: 1) The saving of man/woman from the spiritual consequences of sin, especially in the afterlife; 2) Deliverance from eternal punishment and entrance to heavenly blessedness. Liberation from bondage and the results of sin by the divine agency of the atonement of Christ.

Such definitions are wholly within the Christian context. But many of us cannot accept this particular salvation scheme. Erwin Goodenough, a pioneer in the studies of psychology of religion, saw variety as an essential feature of religion, much as the idea of art entails by necessity a multiplicity of media forms and schools. Considering the foregoing definitions, I believe that partialistic boundaries can be widened, made more inclusive, if we think of salvation as “the highest good which any faith offers its followers.”

Can persons holding Unitarian Universalist principles, rooted in freedom of belief and trusting in reason, find meaning in a term such as “salvation?” How do we deal with the nature of this religious idea which permeates the times and places of Judeo-Christian history?

Historically, Universalism was founded as a salvation denomination, proposing that all persons would be saved through the goodness of God. No God of love would sentence any human being to eternal punishment. All persons would be saved, and there would be a final harmony of all souls with God. However, the most influential and central doctrine of the Christian churches is that all believers must “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved .... As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive.”

If, however, you, like I, cannot accept such dogmas based on faith without examination, then one thinks and believes in different ways. If you share my belief that ideas, dogmas, and institutions are the result of forces moving with the dimensions of human and natural history, sometimes galvanized to a magnetic person, then the idea of salvation deserves investigation to ascertain whether it can have any meaning for us today.

There is a shared confusion about religious salvation, in my opinion. Generally, both the Christian religious conformist and the unbeliever or the skeptic think of salvation as a future state to come as a reward to those who have believed creeds, shared sacraments, or been “saved.” The believer hopes for a happy land beyond the grave. The unbeliever rejects the idea of salvation because any concept which requires postponement to an uncertain future seems to him or her either to be “pie in the sky by and by” or wishful thinking. Paul Tillich wrote (THEOLOGY OF CULTURE, p. 35), “salvation is beyond time, it is always independent of any stage of time. It is the eternal present above every temporal present.”

If I understand him, I, too, find that unless salvation is an experience we can know in our present lives, then there is no profit in pursuing its meaning.

The various Christian doctrines of salvation have been subjected to ancient influences:

In primitive Jewish religion, there was a great ceremonial occasion when the people rid themselves of the sins of which they felt guilty, by rubbing their hands on the hide of the scapegoat. This scapegoat was then driven into the wilderness, carrying with it the sins of the people.

In a more responsible age, this primitive notion of an innocent goat carrying the guilt burden for all became transformed into corporate responsibility for all. Isaiah 53/45:

“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows; ....
but he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities
Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
And with his stripes we are healed.”

Most scholars I have read concur that Isaiah was not predicting the advent of Jesus, the Christian savior. Rather, Isaiah, in an enduring blend of poetry and ethical prophecy, was referring to the whole body of Israel which must bear responsibility. Theologically and culturally, the idea carried over into Christian theology, but the emphasis was reversed. Instead of a whole people bearing corporate responsibility for the sins of any, Christian theology proposed that Jesus was a single “suffering servant” who “bears our stripes” and by his atoning death saves all.

But for those of us who have come to different beliefs, such are not our ways. Most of us who gather here would not feel at home either with over-simplified doctrinal formulas which proclaim the only way of salvation must be linked with the belief in a single God-man savior, or in over-elaborated rituals which assert that we are saved by seven sacraments.

When I consider the idea of salvation, insofar as one can have any meaning for me, three experiences come to mind: character, reconciliation, imagination.

One of the other dictionary definitions offers the thought that “salvation is preservation from destruction, disintegration, failure or other evil.” This definition is easier for me to understand than “consequences of sin.”

First, salvation by character was explicit in the most widely used Unitarian affirmation of faith. We do not claim originality. Salvation by character is an old and respected basis of religious authenticity. Centuries before Jesus, Ezekiel proclaimed (18/5), “If a man is righteous and does what [is] lawful and right – if he does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment ... withholds his hand from iniquity, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes and is careful to obey my ordinances, he is righteous, he shall surely live, says the Lord God.” Notice how every one of these qualities applies to behavior in this world.

Character is what we are and what we do. Character can focus our perspective so we will not make any artificial and unreal distinctions between things alleged to be “spiritual” and things alleged to be “material.”

Regardless of what may await us in worlds beyond our experience of this life (and I do not think there are any such other worlds), salvation by character involves what we are and what we do here in this world. I do not know any way to appraise a man or woman as good other than acts and attitudes in this world.

Whatever motives that thrash around within us, and whatever acts I do that consciously or insidiously separate me from the things and principles I believe highest, place additional barriers between me and salvation – whether I define salvation in some orthodox fashion or whether I define it (as I do) as humanistic self-fulfillment, responsibility, and maturing. David Hume (AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, p. 308, Harvard Classics) expressed the rule succinctly, “Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.” [CJW note: or woman]

But this is not enough. We must confront the social nature of character. Thus there is salvation by reconciliation, also.

Plain-speaking Jeremiah, another of the great prophets of the Hebrew heritage, mourned (8/20) “the harvest is over, the summer is ended and we are not saved.” “WE” are not saved! Salvation is not just an individual affair, but an achievement of community. The leaders of the American Revolution endorsed the Declaration of Independence [with the words]: WE pledge our lives, our fortunes and sacred honor. There can be no individual salvation worthy of the name unless that redemption involves reconciliation and peace between human beings in human community.

Do you remember how Herman Melville, in MOBY DICK, expressed a sensitive understanding of salvation by reconciliation? In the chapter, THE CASTAWAY, Melville introduced the event, “A most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew.” Pip, the little cabin boy, ordinarily did not accompany the whaleboats when these were launched from the vessel when a whale was sighted. Pip, a native of Tolland County, Connecticut, loved life and usually remained in safety on the Pequod. But one day on the broad Pacific, one of the oarsmen hurt his hand and Pip was enlisted as the substitute. When a whale was harpooned, one of its fins made a sharp rap on the underside of the boat. In terror, Pip jumped overboard. The second mate, Stubb, did not cut the rope in order to pick up Pip, assuming another whale boat would do so. But these boats had turned in another direction and had not seen Pip jump.

Pip was alone. He saw no other humans for hours as he struggled to keep afloat. By rare chance, he was sighted after a considerable time by the vessel, the Pequod. Pip’s life was saved, but his reason was forever gone. Henceforth, he was mentally disabled. The strain of feeling that he had been completely abandoned by his human kind has been too much for him. The old myth of Cain expressed the same desolation when he was rejected and excluded from human community, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.”

Any idea of salvation that ignores the human community seems a pointless and hollow achievement. Now we are becoming increasingly sensitive that community must some day mean world community, or surely we shall not be saved. No one can be individually saved from nuclear war, or widespread ecological disaster.

Lastly, I would offer that there must be salvation by imagination. Jesus said to Nicodemus (John 3/3), “Truly I say unto you that unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Almost always, in usual Christian thinking this is the Big Phrase – born again referring to the Christian conviction of sin and guilt and [the] consequent conversion that sometimes follows – a polar switch of emotional extremes. Born again.

But it seems to me that one can also interpret this old saying another way: imagination is necessary for salvation. One must acquire a new vision – see things as they should be and might be. Even persons of high integrity can become deeply depressed unless hope continuously offers the vision of a better world for the human adventure.

We need imagination to appreciate the varied ways persons of other faiths envision salvation. Some Hindus find salvation in the way of Bhakti, devotion. Through faith, love, and service, they find salvation ... in vows, pilgrimages, and sacred rites.

When the Buddhist holds up the four noble truths and pledges himself/herself to the eight-fold path to salvation, we need the imagination to recognize [that] we have companions on the ways to a better world.

We are saved by our vision of what we want to become and recognizing companions who seek the same values, though perhaps speaking different words and worshiping at other altars.