Salvation is about freedom here and now

I n the last few weeks several people have taken to Twitter to defend their view of salvation in 280 characters or less. This tweet storm has centered chiefly around a

Baptist pastor in Dallas, Robert Jeffress, who has been a loud proponent of an exclusionary view of salvation — that only those who have faith in Christ can be saved from hell: “Not only do religions like Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism — not only do they lead people away from the true God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in hell.” (Robert Jeffress’ sermon: “Politically Incorrect Part 1”)

The notion of salvation has been important as long as the story of God has been lived and told. The Judeo-Christian scriptures contain many metaphors for salvation, very few of which connect salvation to an afterlife. The dominant image of salvation in the Bible is liberation here and now. The freeing of the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt is a primary narrative of the First Testament.

In the Second Testament, this notion of salvation as freedom continues. In Jesus’ first sermon, he says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. And has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” (Luke 4:18). Paul writes about Christ setting us free such that we are no longer trapped in an old way of being but are released as new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).

In many churches, this biblical concept of salvation is ignored in favor of teaching that Jesus had to die as the punishment for our sins. This understanding is called substitutionary atonement. While popular now, it did not appear as a full theological framework until the 11th century, a millennium after Jesus died, in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury, a monk and theologian.

Anselm did not go unchallenged, even by his contemporaries. Unfortunately, theologian and reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) took up Anselm’s ideas and further developed them, even to the point of valorizing suffering. After the Reformation, the voices championing substitutionary atonement were almost always louder than voices with differing views. But those other voices were always there.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the American clergyman and theologian Hosea Ballou (1771-1852) offered a no-holds-barred critique of Anselm’s and Calvin’s explanations for Jesus’ death: “The belief that the great Jehovah was offended with his creatures to that degree that nothing but the death of Christ, or the endless misery of mankind, could appease his anger, is an idea that has done more injury to the Christian religion than the writings of all its opposers, for many centuries. The error has been fatal to the life and spirit of the religion of Christ in our world.”

The damage this view of salvation has done includes the glorification of senseless suffering, heavy doses of guilt and shame, the legitimation of violence, and a focus of religion toward what happens after we die and away from Jesus’ teachings of love, inclusion and freeing people from oppression now.

Jesus lived within an empire that believed violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right. The empire sought violence for its redemption, not God. It let violence speak, not peace, not love, not justice. Jesus counters the empire and its belief in violence. Jesus counters religious collaboration with the empire’s violence and oppression until his dying breath.

Stephen Patterson, a professor of the history of religion, writes: “Is Jesus dead? Not yet. But what the cross could not do, Christians could. We are killing Jesus … His words and deeds mean little to us, if anything at all. We do not look to Jesus for a way of life, but for salvation.” So many have chosen faith in personal salvation through afixed set of beliefs over the work of loving neighbors. Many prefer Christ crucified, silenced.

Is Christian salvation primarily about individual salvation from hell or is it about the creation of the realm of God’s love on Earth? Jesus said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

The word “ransom” has been heard only as sacrificial language. We’ve heard preacher after preacher say that Jesus paid the ransom for our sins. But it almost certainly does not have this meaning in Mark. The Greek word translated as “ransom” (lutron) is used in the Bible not in the context of payment for sin, but to refer to payment made to liberate captives (often from captivity in war) or salves (often from debt slavery). A lutron, a ransom is a means of liberation from bondage. Jesus gave “his life as a ransom for many” he gave his life as a means of liberation from bondage/from oppression.

Salvation is about the transformation of the world by joining in the work Jesus was passionate about — work to create the kingdom of God on earth where the oppressed are freed, peace is secured not through violence but through love, justice is established through sharing, compassion and economic transformation, and welcome unfolds through radical inclusion.

Beliefs about exclusionary salvation, particularly when they are paired with apocalyptic notions of end-times, generate fear, which provides fertile soil for manipulation. If “we” are going to Heaven and the world will end anyway, why does it matter so much what happens to the Earth? Catastrophic climate change, structural inequalities, systemic racism — it’s easy to think these things don’t matter so much when the focus is a Get-Out-of-Hell-Free Card.

We’ve heard so many argue that salvation is only through belief in Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t seem particularly concerned about belief. He is busy welcoming and eating with those who’ve been excluded.

He talks a lot about the Kingdom of God here on Earth, right here, right now —a realm of justice and peace where love of God and neighbor is most important. When Jesus is asked about eternal life and what is needed to achieve it, he tells the rich, young ruler to “Go and sell all you have and give it to the poor.”

When asked the same question by a lawyer, Jesus answers the question with a question: “What is written?” and the lawyer lifts up the commandment to love God and neighbor and then asks: “Who is my neighbor?” In response, Jesus tells a story about a man left in a ditch by robbers, ignored by a priest and a Levite, and finally helped by a “good Samaritan.” Jesus isn’t focused on faith or belief, he is focused on love, on care, on welcome.

Perhaps there is some heaven or hell that we might or might not be saved from by our “faith in Christ.” Even if there is, surely God doesn’t need our help with it. God is asking again and again that we care now, that we love now, that we help to end injustice now. Whatever happens after I die, the hell we are living now where children are shot in their schools, where families are separated from each other at the border, where people must choose between their medicine and eating, where black men are shot in the back — this hell, this hell needs salvation and I am convinced that faith in Christ calls us to be part of it.

Rev. Laura Mayo is senior minister of Covenant Church: an ecumenical, liberal, Baptist congregation in Houston.