In an article for the on-line journal the Huffington Post, an American sociologist writes about Jesus ‘Evangelicals don't exactly hate Jesus’ he writes, ‘They do love him dearly. But not because of what he tried to teach humanity. Rather, Evangelicals love Jesus for what he does for them. Through his magical grace, and by shedding his precious blood, Jesus saves Evangelicals from everlasting torture in hell’
The writer’s use of Evangelical is a little too finger waving at them not me for my liking. Nevertheless, his statement is very provocative, and for me, during this time of Lent, with its lead up to Good Friday and Easter, it’s good to have my thoughts provoked in this way. It begs some real questions for me, and perhaps for you. Firstly, how much does talk about Jesus as the Saviour come from the thinking of a generation after the thoughts and words of Jesus?
A more important question, though, is this:
To what extent does our accepting Jesus as our saviour let us off the hook of following his teaching?
For instance, when Paul writes to the Romans: “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are (put right) with God by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which came by Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an atoning sacrifice…” he means that we are saved from punishment through accepting Jesus as the saviour, not by following the precepts of the Jewish law. Thus it is the person of faith not the perfectly moral person who is saved. Yet if we return to the teaching of Jesus towards the end of the Sermon on the mount, he says “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you workers of Lawlessness!’ This statement occurs towards the end of a sermon in which Jesus expounds his vision of the kingdom of God, and the kind of conduct that is required of people.
At the very end of the sermon he says:
“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise person who built their house upon a rock; and the rains fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
So I return to the questions with which I began: In what way does the idea of Grace and God’s salvation in Jesus lead us to ignore the call of Jesus to live in an ethical way?
I wonder how easy it is to put aside the demands of Jesus when we think of him as a Saviour and not a teacher. Therefore the questions I shall ponder on are: When is salvation? Which age is the saviour for, the present age or the age to come? When I look at the cross on Good Friday, do I see a Saviour sacrificed for my sins? Or a reminder of what remains a painful reality for so many today because the teaching of the crucified one remains unheeded?
I believe that Jesus is a teacher, not a Saviour. Only we can save ourselves. The word salvation has also lost its true meaning. Salvation means to be Enlightened as it is called in other cultures. Hell is a man made construct used to control the masses through Guilt and Fear. God is all loving and would never send anyone to such a place for not praying, going to worship and flattering Him every Sunday.
ReplyDeleteUnderneath the violent religious differences which set them apart from another, they are astonishingly alike, both in Fundamental Principles and, frequently, in their ways of presentation. Rama, Zoroaster, Krishna, Lao-Tse, Buddha, Jesus did not teach separate ways to reach rival Gods. They taught practically one and the same thing-how people might conduct their activities in accordance with certain unchanging Basic Truths, in such fashion as to live a happier, more normal and more successful life on Earth."
- Eugene Fersen