We (and by we I mean mainline Protestant American Christianity including Evangelicals) use the word salvation in a very narrow sense. We talk about being 'saved' in the past tense as a singular occurrence. We pass from destined for hell to destined for heaven. A binary state flag is flipped from 0 to 1. This is a dangerous approach to a word and it colors the way we interpret so many different parts of the Bible.
I read the parable about the sower today and I started thinking about the limited way we frame salvation (only pertaining to heaven/hell) and the application of that parable. A lot of people try to split hairs about which people are 'saved' and which aren't in the parable (way side seeds, choked seeds, withered seeds, and seeds that produce fruit). That is not the right approach interpreting parables. I don't think it's about salvation in the sense of heaven/hell. If you think of it as all of the people receiving seeds are already 'saved' (or not) then the parable is about their every day life rather than a conversion experience
Sometimes even for a saved person the Word of God is put into their life and they don't respond. This is Satan messing with our salvation. Here I don't mean "going to heaven or hell" that is permanently settled. But the daily living out of salvation (in the sense of deliverance from the power of sin) is something we can cheat ourselves out of. If we don't respond to the Word when we hear it then it (and the power it has) can be quickly removed.
Maybe a good sermon that could help us gets set aside because of other things on our mind? I think the other examples work here too. When we see the word salvation in the Bible we can't automatically narrow the meaning down to heaven/hell. So when we move away from interpreting the Gospel as being narrowly applied to only heaven/hell instead of being applied to every day we run into weird parable interpretations. Every day I can let the world choke out the Word of God in my life. Every day I can be fruitful. Every day I can harden myself and let Satan steal the usefulness of God's Word. That's better than "Well this one day I accepted Jesus so now I don't have to think about being choked out, or withered, or fruitful because that's already decided". It also means any confusion about "well they're acting like they are withered so maybe they aren't saved" because it isn't about that. It's about the Gospel's impact on my every day life. My constant salvation (deliverance) from sin is the view, not a binary state flip.
A holistic approach to salvation is better for us as a church. I understand the distinction between justification and sanctification as theological concepts, but I think that pushing only one of those as the view of every parable leads to anemic theology. We view everything through the lens of salvation as heaven/hell and impose that as the interpretation for every parable and wonder why some parables don't seem to make any sense. It's because we're restricting ourselves to a small (and understandably important) space of Christianity.
This reveals a flaw in our mindset. It shows our goal is not to be better, but rather to avoid punishment. If Christianity is reduced from becoming like Christ to avoiding punishment for our failures then Christianity is in a sad state. It ceases to be a revolution of the human heart and life and becomes one more system for people to hide behind. A system to try and mask the chill and fear that thoughts of death strike into the human heart. Another way to try and smother doubts and worries that we don't have answers for. That's the beauty of Christ. He doesn't offer a system that wipes away our fears. He doesn't offer simple pat answers for our difficult questions. He offers himself and the life he lived.
Our comfort doesn't lie in having the answers. It lies in knowing the answers are out there somewhere and we'll get to them some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment