Today I got a message in my inbox:
Hi Ethan! I came across your article on ChurchLeaders, and I’m just so thankful I finally found someone who explains exactly what I’ve been feeing for so long…I do have a question though, how can I know if I’m even saved in the first place? Just like the student you mentioned in your article, my main reason for believing is really just my fear for hell…
I began to reply to her but then realized that it is not a simple reply, but (at least) an entire blog post. So here are some thoughts. If I can make just a few people a little less scared of God, it’ll be a massive success.
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I distinctly remember the morning: I was probably in fourth grade(ish), and at a Colorado summer camp that no longer exists. The sermon that morning had been on the gospel, with a special emphasis on hell. My small group sat outside in a circle and I told my counselor that, yes I was indeed scared of hell, so I’d be praying to accept Jesus.
It was probably my sixth time accepting Jesus (phrase open to interpretation) but, like the respondent today, I wasn’t sure if the other give times had yet worked. I didn’t feel any different.
Fast forward to Australia when I was 19. I was getting baptized and hoping very badly that I would feel different when I emerged from the water. Yet again, I rose up from the ocean and felt the same as before.
It would be almost a decade before I began to unpack a lot of what the Bible teaches about salvation, the gospel, heaven and hell, knowing Jesus, et al., and realize that the way it’s all packaged to Americans is tragically below what is actually in the Bible.
Too often, the gospel is presented as a golden ticket on a one-way train to heaven for a bunch of undeserving sinners. As long as your faith is good enough. And you love nothing more than praying and worshiping. And you cry every time you think of Jesus. And you give up all material possessions in order to free your desires. Et cetera.
I think that a lot of our conversionist language emerges more from Middle Ages feudalism, or Muslim conquests, than from Jesus. We have the verse which always pops into mind, Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That’s it, right? That’s the train ticket, yah?
The thing is, if you look at the chapters before and after, you find no mention of the afterlife. We never stop and ask important questions like, “What does Paul mean by the word ‘saved’?” We are so accustomed to reading the Bible through this lens of afterlife terror that we assume that any reference to being saved refers to heaven or hell. We sift all of the Bible through a filter that sorts things into ‘heaven and hell language’ even when it’s not there.
Most passages about being saved conjure images of a life raft being tossed to us in a torrential sea sucking us down to the depths. Thank goodness we are saved from an eternity down there! Better hold on tight or I’m doomed!
