More on salvation

There's a lot of discussion lately on salvation, heaven, and hell. Rob Bell's latest book release seems to have stirred up all kinds of debate. First off, I do not, as some do, lament this. It is a conversation that we need to be having. Theological debates, provided they are civil and express God's love, are good for us.

I read a question this morning that struck me. I can't completely has out the person who phrased it's position fairly but I will try to respond to it honestly here while acknowledging that I can do this position justice. The question asked, in relation to hell was if we aren't saved from the coming wrath then what are we saved from?

I am, for better or for worse, agnostic on the existence of hell as we traditionally think of it. There is some scriptural support for and against it that I won't get into here. I'm not going to proof text hell into or out of existence. I am, as I think most people should be, very uneasy about the idea of eternal torture. If the idea of unrelenting agony forever doesn't make you a bit squeamish then I don't have anything nice to say about you. We'll just move on.

What I do believe about hell is less a place than a state. Hell is to be without God. When there is separation between myself and God, I suffer. I am not living as I should. I am miserable, wretched, and lonely. I am stuck in a pattern of selfish sin that I am powerless to break out of. Grace destroys the power of sin. Grace enables me to no longer be held captive to my own selfish, sinful nature but to be transformed and remade in the image of God.

Through the grace we have in Jesus we are no longer slaves to sin. We are saved not from wrath but from ourselves. We are saved not into the absence of hell but the presence of God. We are saved into righteousness.

We can discuss grace and works all we like, but when we make salvation only about our eternal destination we make this life meaningless. If grace merely keeps one from hell and is found merely in confessing Jesus as Lord then the best thing that could possibly happen to anyone is to pray the right prayer early enough in life that we're able to do so absent any doubt and then to promptly die before we suffer any more in this life or before we can somehow screw up our own salvation. To make salvation only about eternity is to trade this life for the hypothetical, to ignore real suffering in this life for the promise of better (or the threat of much, much worse) in the next.

I'm not saying that I know there's no hell, or at least not in the way we think of it. I'm saying we can't know, or at least I am not blessed with the gift of such certainty. I do know that there is suffering here. I do know that there is separation from God here. And for me that is hell enough. We are called to take God's people, all of them and like Moses deliver them from the captors, this hell here that is a life absent God, and into the promised land which is the presence of God. That is possible absent belief in eternity, heaven or hell.

We are not saved from nothing to nothing. We are saved from sin and into righteousness. And yes, we are saved from hell, I guess. But hell may not be what we think it is. Heaven, either. I trust God enough to allow our Creator to deal with the logistics of eternity. I've got enough to worry about in this life.

Thinking about the title of this post I keep thinking "Moron Salvation" instead of "More on salvation" that relates to my previous post on salvation. This "moron salvation" sticks to me in a sense because, in my sinful nature I act a bit like a self involved moron. Grace saves me from being this moron.

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