We Should Have Got the Joke

The Absurdity of Some Ideas of Salvation

I sometimes imagine an exchange between an enquirer (someone searching) and a leader of a church:

Enquirer: Why does your church exist?
Leader: To show the way of salvation.
Enquirer: Is everyone saved?
Leader: Oh, no! In fact, only a very few in the scheme of things.
Enquirer: Who are the ones who are saved?
Leader: All of the ones who think like we do and believe what we believe.

Did you get the joke?

I’ll try another imaginary conversation:

Enquirer: You mention a place called hell. What is hell?
Leader: It is the place of eternal conscious torment.
Enquirer: Eternal? You mean forever?
Leader: Yes, eternal. The torment goes on forever.
Enquirer: And you believe that people are sent there?
Leader: Well, really they choose it themselves.
Enquirer: Why would anyone choose that?And how do they choose it?
Leader: Well, they choose it by not believing the right things.
Enquirer: And what are the right things to believe?
Leader: The right things to believe are the things that we believe here at this church.

Did you get the joke this time?

A child cannot see past themselves. We really don’t expect them to. A child makes the assumption, in thought and practice that THEIR world is THE world. Through social, physical, emotional and spiritual development, the child comes to see that there are other people in the world. There are, in fact, people who are different than them, people who don’t share the same habits and customs and background as them and their family. We would not count it as mature if the child grew up to think that the only way to live was the way with which they were familiar. In fact, we would likely consider it growth if that person came to see the value and wonder and beauty of the life of others, particularly those who are different.

It should not be counted as spiritual or religious maturity to consider that the only people who are in, in the end, are the people who think what you think. The adolescent (or even childish) idea of salvation is that its only direction is away from others and away from the world.

I know how some Christian expressions can get to this. I know the verses that are interpreted this way. Jesus refers to himself as “the way”¹ in language that some parts of the church have used to exclude others. This is a curious move as, when Jesus said those words, they were spoken as words of consolation, not as words of threat.

I don’t think that pontificating on who is in and who is out is of much use at all. I think that it limits our faith and our awareness of the presence of God. As a Christian, if I think that God is only really present in how I live, what I believe, how I worship, then I become more closed, not open to what it means that God, in Jesus, moved towards the world, not away from the world. If I think that God is with me because of what I believe, but not with that other person because of what they believe then I wind up missing genuine interaction not only with the other person, but with God.

The attractional model of church was big in the 1990’s and 2000’s. There are various names that accompany, “seeker friendly,” “church growth,”etc. The idea was to get as many people as possible to the church. What wound up happening was smaller churches were decimated by mega-churches. It’s not that more and more people wound up going to church. In large measure, more and more people left their small church to become part of a larger church. Go ahead and ask the minister of a small local church about this.

Attractional was a church model, marketing kind of idea, but it was (and is) reflective of a larger theological concept. The direction of salvation was from the world to the church. We had to get them in the door. Or, as the joke that so many missed implied, the only ones saved in the end are the ones within walls like these.

So, the other day I saw an image that spoke a corrective to me about all of this. The image was a kind of invitation. I have had visions (freaky, hey?) before about the walls of churches coming down and a call being spoken towards hope and healing apart from the rigid definitions of what church can become. In other words, I do not feel at all that my Christian faith is weakened or diminished by letting go of the demand to only see one way.

I took a photo of what I saw.
In tearing down a house just a block away from where we live, the demolition crew had left only the door. The image became a prayer for me. The door, like the door to a church, opened only into the world. Going through the door would not lead a person into an exclusive club of the blessed and favoured, but rather into an awareness that life was to be experienced in the expansive reality without walls. Or as Psalm 18 says, “You led me to a spacious place.”

You might think that what I am saying is un-Christian. The religious impulse is often to consider any way of thought different than our own as suspect, dangerous or deadly. In this way of seeing, the only way to be saved is to think as we think, to believe what we believe. This way of thinking winds up depicting the world as a terrible or dark or forsaken place. The world is not forsaken. There are no God forsaken places and no God forsaken people.

It is not less Christian, but more so, to seek to be aware of the presence of God and the incarnation of Jesus in the world, not only in the church. There are many smarter people than me, smarter Christian people, who have spent time thinking through these things. Ivan Illych (Catholic priest, censured for his open views on faith) said that real church growth would be for the church to disappear into the saeculum (the world, the secular). In other words, we don’t move further and further apart, but rather our faith becomes more and more enlivening within the larger world. Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of a “religion-less Christianity” and Karl Barth asked if the hope of the church was to cease to exist in its human construction and institution.

This is why the image remains a prayer for me. I don’t pretend to, or even want to, have this all figured out. Rather, I see the image as faithful. A call deeper into my faith by letting go of the walls. Turns out it is a much much nicer house.

1. John 14:6