Radio Salvation

[lydamorehouse]

My five hour trip across Wisconsin could hardly be considered profitable, but it _was_ entertaining.

The drive itself was, well, grueling. Unintentionally, I left the Twin Cities just as rush hour traffic hit. I decided I was in desperate need to get a haircut before I left, so I did, and Great Clips took longer than I expected. So, I sat in crawlingly slow traffic from Snelling Avenue to the 35/94 interchange. After that, the drive was pretty smooth. Yahoo told me to take I-94 to Tomah, and then exit on State Highway 21. 21 takes you across the entire width of Wisconsin and right into Oshkosh proper. Since I was traveling alone (my family stayed at home), I spent much of my time singing loudly (and badly) to whatever I could find on the radio (my car does not have a CD player). I managed to find rock – though a surprising amount of Nickelback and not a whole lot of variety, all the way.

Strangely, even though I took the exact route back only going west instead of east, I mostly caught country, public radio, and Jesus.

I ended up listening to the Jesus channel (something Mission coming out of Chicago) because it was a reenacted testimonial story, (which I could buy in comic book form!) and I was curious to see how Jesus was going to save this poor sap’s life. Once again I was disappointed by Jesus. Our hero, Joe Christian, had a miserable life – which included alcohol, cursing, and smoking – which kept getting worse and worse. Then his mother talk him into attending church. At first it doesn’t stick. One day, after hearing a particularly rousing sermon (though they never tell us what about) Joe asks the pastor to pray with him after services. The pastor says, “Sure.” They bow their heads and somehow Joe is touched by the holy spirit and instantly cured of all his problems.

This, my friends, is crappy story telling.

I have absolutely no resonance with the concept of suddenly being saved, which is one of the many reasons why the Left Behind books failed for me as a reader. I just don’t get it. I realize this is the whole miracle part of being miraculously saved, but I’m such a Unitarian Universalist by upbringing that my brain just tilts at the idea of achieving grace without working for it. Shouldn’t you have to do some good first? How is it that this a**hole can live such a crappy life and then, in one single moment, bow his head, and ask Jesus to enter his soul, and that’s all it takes? He’s filled with the glory of the Lord and all that jazz.

I realize that for a lot of Christians that’s whole point. Jesus DOESN’T ask for anything in return. It’s some kind of whacked out gift.

I think this is morally bankrupt and, as I said, just plain bad story telling. One of the key elements of a good, character-driven story is that the main character should go through some kind of change and this change shouldn’t be random, it should be earned in such a way so that the reader’s can root for the character’s struggles. Instant cup-o-grace is like the wishing box at the end of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead. It takes away all the struggle. If you get what you wish for and all you have to do is wish, then what’s the story? Where’s the jeopardy? What’s at stake?

I don’t understand why this captures so many people’s imagination. Salvation should come through risk – personal, hard-earned risk. You should have to sacrifice, shouldn’t you?

Enough Jesus rant.

Comments

[swords-and-pens.livejournal.com]

You should have to sacrifice, shouldn’t you?

Well, it depends on the theology you follow. :) It's a lot less harsh now, but back in the early days of the Reformation, some Protestant traditions didn't believe in salvation through works. Yes, you *should* live a good and virtuous life, etc. etc., but that was no guarantee. Predestination was a big thing, which meant that no matter how hard you worked your spritual ass off, most people were doomed no matter what. But, you never knew -- you could be one of the lucky ones, so don't screw up just in case! Me, I never understood the appeal of this philosophy, but then, I'm not living in the Renaissance, either, so it's kinda hard to get inside their heads.

Mind you, the above came from reading the (relatively) same Old and New Testamants as now. It's not always been a given that you get off the hook in Christianity just by saying, "Gosh, Jesus is swell!" That's a very modern (in terms of religious time) approach.

Nowadays, I think it has gotten even muddier with all the Evangelical sects. But the big thing seems to be instant gratification. Pass Go, collect your forgiveness and go dircetly to Salvation. Personally, I don't buy into the whole "Get Out of Hell" free card thing either, but looking at the short-term nature of our society, can you expect anything else? You want people to have to WORK for something they can't spend or watch or plug in the wall? Where's the immediate payoff in that? What are you, some sort of maniac? ;p

Some sort of maniac, indeed

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah... I am. I think my biggest problem is my upbringing. Even though I have since fallen away, the religion of one's youth is often what imprints the strongest on a person (religion as ducklings?).

Unitarian Universalists teach the concept of salvation through good works, i.e. you get a reward if you're decent to your fellow human beings (and, since we don't believe in an afterlife, the reward is that warm, fuzzy feeling you get for having done the right thing.) It *is* a thoroughly modern religion, having been invented some time during the Age of Reason or something like that.

UU funerals are very weird. There is not talk of "the final reward," only the reward of a life well lived.

For a story that actually makes the sudden salvation experience real,

[plaidder.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain.

It's a great novel and the description of the narrator's "salvation" at the end is terrifyingly convincing. Of course, Baldwin writes the book after he's been through the salvation experience and then distanced himself from it to look at it analytically--the analysis is available in The Fire Next Time--so maybe that helps with the storytelling. Baldwin doesn't actually believe that being saved will resolve everything for the narrator, and the narrator may not completely believe that either, even though he has the full-on experience complete with visions, convulsions, and speaking in tongues.

Even from the Catholic perspective, grace is always a gift. There are a lot of ways in which grace, from both the Catholic and Protestant perspectives, doesn't work with storytelling as we understand it precisely because it marks the fact that the Christian God does not do things the way a human being would. There's that parable, for instance, where a vineyard owner goes out and hires a bunch of different workers at different times of day and contracts for the same wage with each group even though one group is hired at dawn and works all day and the other group is only hired an hour before quitting time. The early-hired group naturally complains about this. The vineyard owner says, look, you got what you bargained for; if I feel like being generous to these other people, what skin is it off your nose? From the workers' perspective this is outrageously unfair because people are doing different amounts of work for the same reward. From the vineyard owner's perspective, the point is that everyone gets the gift, even though some work harder for it than others. And yeah, from our perspective, that's not fair and it doesn't make sense. From our perspective the whole idea of the elect and the reprobate--the Protestant theory that we are saved or damned before birth and nothing we actually do on earth will change our status although it may confirm it--seems unfair too, and threatens to make nonsense out of your entire human life because it makes you powerless to affect the one thing that matters most.

Of course, from a labor perspective, the vineyard parable can be read as an indication that Jesus believed in the right to negotiate and in a guaranteed minimum wage. But I digress.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Sin Pays? Show up late for Jesus!

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, see this is a concept that makes my head hurt. (I also don't understand the cherry [is it? Fig maybe?] that is damned by Jesus for not being in season when he wants it.)

So... I'm damned/saved before I even get out the door, so I can "show up" whenever and get the same reward as the people who have lived like Mother Teresa their whole lives? Ouch. My head!

I guess my problem is that, for me, religion is meant to be a blueprint for how to live one's life on Earth. It's supposed to be some kind of moral compass -- it's supposed to have a good moral. Something that when we are confronted with a choice of being good or being evil, we have some way of knowing what's the best choice even when things aren't black and white. The parable you quote above makes me think that the moral of the story is: slack off for Jesus and that I have no responsiblity to live a good life. I can slack off until the last possible moment and still get the great gift. How is that a good story for me to keep in my heart while living my life?

See, for me, it all comes back to story telling. This parable is a terrible *story.* It doesn't work for me, alas. I'm sending Jesus a rejection letter (TEASE!). However, I love James Baldwin, so I might give your recommendation a chance.

What are you UnAmerican?

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

The most fascinating thing about Christianity, to me, is how it changes HUGELY as it gets filtered through various dominant cultures.

Here in America salvation is a free gift, a precious commodity that is handed to you free-of-charge. But there IS a catch: you can lose it. That's right, you can screw up enough and it gets snatched away! Some sects think you can lose it for slightest unforgiven, unconfessed offense, while others think you really have to harden your heart to lose your salvation, but all the Christians I know believe that you can lose your salvation.

This fits beautifully into a culture where so many people seem well-off and privileged, they have the trappings of wealth, but they could actually go from suburban middle-class to homeless with one good lay-off and a medical emergency sans insurance.

The concept of earning your salvation through good works is still with us, it just morphed. Now you earn PROSPERITY in this life by being a good Christian. This is actually an ingenious twist! Not only does Christianity become a sort of get-rich-quick pyramid scheme (always a draw) but we can also dismiss the poor by telling ourselves that they did something to deserve being poor. How cool is that? And as for all the stuff in the Bible that completely contradicts this notion . . .well, American Christianity ignores big chunks of scripture all the time anyway.

And nobody REALLY likes the Book of Job. Boils. Dead cattle. Eeww.

Okay I'll stop now lest I full-on rant in response to your rant. Hey, it was a cool rant . . .the best rants ALWAYS generate more rants in response, right?

:-P

Re: What are you UnAmerican?

[naomikritzer]

You know some really wacky Christians. I have seen (online) a dyed-in-the-wool born again Bible thumper tell an atheist that she must be going to heaven, because this atheist was once a believing Christian who had faith and was saved. (There was even a term for this kind of salvation.) It is a central tenet for most Protestant groups that once you've been saved (by which they mean, you need to pray the Sinner's Prayer with true faith -- see the back of any Chick Tract for details) you will ALWAYS be saved and cannot lose your salvation under any circumstances.

::puts on religion geek hat::

This, incidentally, is the key to understanding the fundamental problem with the typical salvation narrative. If you're saved no matter what, does that mean that Christians who go on to engage in truly reprehensible behavior (rape, murder, etc.) go to heaven without passing "go," all because they asked for forgiveness in advance back when they were twelve and at Bible Camp? The standard response to this is to claim that the people who go on to commit horrible crimes just didn't have real faith, but this undercuts their claim (that if you pray the sinner's prayer, you can KNOW that you are saved). Far easier to claim that at the moment of salvation, full personal transformation happened instantaneously, and only minor sins remained a temptation, because that avoids some of the most difficult questions regarding Luther's doctrine of salvation by faith.

::takes off religion geek hat::

My favorite fictional exploration of this particular issue is Saint Maybe, by Anne Tyler.

Re: What are you UnAmerican?

[naomikritzer]

Excuse me, where I said "most Protestant groups" I should've said "most Evangelical Protestant groups." ELCA Lutherans do by and large believe in salvation through faith but I'm not sure the Sinner's Prayer figures heavily in their understanding of the requirements.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

You're getting awfully close to being a Pelagian heretic, now.

Salvation though free will and the personal choice to follow that which is good, rather than waiting for the necessity of grace? There's dangerous stuff down that road, such as thinking for yourself about what constitutes following the good.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I love it, lit crit of conversion stories. Of course they are lousy, look at their audience. Most of them *never* read once they finish high school, if indeed, they manage that.

Another story of salvation that is actually well written is Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain

[mswyrr]

Not only bad storytelling, but inaccurate, too. According to our own ideology, "born-again" Christians aren't good people, we're just forgiven people. Who should work every day not to need too much forgiveness, but be glad it's there for the inevitable screw ups.

And for every Christian who says they were immediately freed from addictions upon getting born again, there's five others who're stuggling it out in an AlAnon program. And still trying to quit smoking. And their spiritual experience shouldn't be demeaned by some stupid radio show.

[mswyrr]

*struggling

Yes, thank you.

[lydamorehouse]

You just articulated my other problem with this radio show. It leaves the listener with a false sense of how easy it is to change one's life. I totally support people who turn to Jesus to change their lives for the better, who wouldn't? But, to dramatize the concept that the story is OVER when grace happens, seems inaccurate and... somewhat dangerous. Like, what happens when Joe Christian of this story discovers it isn't always easy? Shouldn't the struggle itself be glorious and worthy of story?

[(Anonymous)]

The thing is, the radio show wasn't good Christian Theology. I mean, yes, the Bible is sort of like the United States Constitution; it can be interpreted a lot of different ways. Only, instead of a group of Supreme Court Judges deciding and later changing their minds about what it means, there's a whole bunch of people. But the content of that radio program was wayyyyy out there, barely within reaching distance of the canon.

If Joe Christian turns off the radio for a minute and takes the responsibility to read the canon of his faith for himself, he'll discover it said and shown in the lives of Jesus and his followers over and over again that the struggle for goodness and loving others is glorious and worthy and essential to the Christian faith.

There are so many examples of this that, when I started to list them, I got worried about yammering on in your journal. It's easy to do; to me, this stuff is not only the ideals I try to live my life by, but some really well written literature. I love working it around in my brain, reading different translations, looking up words in the original language, etc. Anyway, I chose one example, the best I could think of, which I hope will show you what the canon actually says without belaboring the point.

Okay, first off, when Jesus is asked "of all the [Judaic] commandments, which is the most important?" (Mark 12:29-31), he says that the most important commandment is to love God, and that there is another. "The second is equally important[emphasis mine]: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"

According to Jesus himself, if we get born again and revel in the Jesus love but don't bother to live a just and loving life, we're not doing it right.

Later, the Apostle Paul explains *exactly* how important that love is compared to any other part of the spiritual experience, and what it entails (Corinthians 13):

1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

There's a bit more, and then he finishes by saying that "Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love."

It's all in there. Compared to a lot of people, I'm a "young" Christian, just beginning to apply reason and search out the canon for myself, and even I have been able to find tons of stuff relating to this issue.

(It pained me to use the New International Version, lemme tell you, because that chapter is poetry in the King James Version (it's the place that gorgeous phrase "though I speak with the tongues of men and angels" and "through a glass, darkly" comes from.) Gah. It gives me the same tingle as reading the best Martin Luther King speeches or Shakespeare. Elegant, deft metaphors, resonance, just... gorgeous stuff. But, that version translates the word used as "charity" instead of "love," which I disagree with. )

[mswyrr]

Er, that was me, btw! :)

[mswyrr]

Okay, I feel I made my point badly, so I'm gonna mentiona couple other things. Hope that's okay.

There's Paul's "thorn in the flesh," which is interpreted many different ways, but could make a good metaphor for any trouble Joe Christian might struggle with; the imprisonment and oppression faced by most of the followers of Jesus; the fact that most of the New Testament is composed of letters Paul sent to various churches to correct corruption (For the millionth time, people, don't privilage the rich! Share all your earthly goods, you stingy jerks. If there's a widow, it's your bloody responsibility to feed her and take care of her kids! And don't marry your father's wife! It's gross) and exhourt them to to keep going forward and stand strong in the face of all their trails and suffering; and then there's the big finale, which is that Christians are told to emulate Christ, who did not have an easy life, and who definitely didn't use his position as the Son of God himself as an excuse to slack off.