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salvation

Theology

doubting my salvation

Picasso_Pablo-Crucifixion
Picasso, “The Crucifixion”

One of the phrases I heard quite a bit in the fundamentalist church I grew up in was “You need to check up on your salvation.” It usually followed a long diatribe on sin, or wordliness, or unrighteousness, and the church-cult leader would say it to make sure we all understood that real Christians feel convicted when they hear sin being preached on. Real Christians feel crushing guilt. Real Christians have the Holy Spirit pricking their conscience day in and day out. If we could get through an entire sermon on sin without feeling a single twinge? Well, then, we needed to “check up” on our salvation, because we probably weren’t saved.

Interestingly, and perhaps paradoxically, I got a completely different message about “doubting my salvation.” Real Christians didn’t doubt their salvation, because real Christians could point to a specific time, a specific place, a specific prayer; and any time the Devil assailed them with doubts (and it was always the Devil doing this), a real Christian could point to that moment and say “get thee behind me, Satan!” That moment gave us “assurance of our salvation.” That moment became our testimony.

My first “moment” was when I was five or six. It was around Halloween, and my Sunday school teacher told a horrifying story about druids going from house to house flaying little children alive and burning pieces of their skin inside of pumpkins. He finished his lesson by telling us that Jesus could protect us from the demons if we “asked him to come into our heart.” Terrified, I spent the entire night curled up in my dark bedroom begging Jesus to protect me from the demons I was positive were going to snatch me out of my bed.

Later, when I was around eight, I realized that Christians got baptized, and when I asked to be baptized the lady I spoke to at church asked me when I’d “gotten saved.” Initially I was frustrated because I didn’t know what the heck she was talking about, and it took a few weeks to communicate my confusion to my mother. When I finally understood what “getting saved” meant to a Baptist, I explained to the woman about that night when I asked Jesus to come into my heart to save me from the demons. She wasn’t entirely convinced by that story, so she led me through a “sinner’s prayer.”

When I was eleven, I was in a revival service listening to an evangelist describe the horror of the crucifixion. The next night he preached a message about the difference between “profession and possession.” He explained how people can walk around saying they’re a Christian but who aren’t “saved” at all. In a sudden burst I realized that I had never really “gotten saved,” so I decided I’d go down to the altar at the end– but wait, what if the Rapture happened before the end of the service? I’d be “given over to a reprobate mind” for not getting saved before the Rapture and go to hell!

So, I walked myself through the Roman’s Road and prayed another sinner’s prayer in the middle of the sermon.

Those were my moments. Those were the times I could point to and declare, definitively, that I was saved. I didn’t have to worry about “doubting my salvation.” I had a rock-solid testimony. Any time I felt conflicted, or unsure, or afraid of hell, I could point to that moment and tell myself there was nothing to worry about.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are moments when I wish for the simplicity of my childhood. When I long for the comfortable black-and-white of saved and not saved— it was so quantifiable, so objective. Saved people had repented of their sin and asked Jesus to save them during a sinner’s prayer. Unsaved people had never done that. It was simple. Easy.

Now, though, that things have become far more complicated and far more gray, I find myself struggling again and again with questions.

Is God real?
Does he love me?
Was Jesus God?
What is Election?
What does the Atonement mean?

Does God send people to hell for no other reason than they’d never heard of Jesus?
Do I want to be a Christian anymore if the answer to that is yes?

And, when I’m asking these questions, you better check up on your salvation comes flitting through my head, unbidden and unwanted. I wish I could banish that phrase from my memory. I wish I’d never heard it once– let alone the countless times it was screamed at me. I wish I could get rid of it, because it makes these questions so much harder. There is a part of me– and sometimes this part of me is big, sometimes it is small– that wonders if I could possibly be a real Christian if I am plagued by these sorts of doubts. How can I call myself a Christian if I’m putting myself into the position of “judging God by human standards”? How can I call myself a Christian if I doubt his existence– or, if not his existence, then if he cares about human reality at all?

How can I be a Christian and doubt?

I know, most of the time, that doubt isn’t the antithesis of Christianity or faith. I know having serious questions about my religion doesn’t disqualify me from embracing it. But, I’m still, sometimes, terrified of being sent to hell– eternal conscious torment–  for my unbelief. Somehow strangely sure that not feeling constant nagging guilt means that I can’t be a real Christian. That my new-found comfort of dwelling in the gray means that I no longer “know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” I am comfortable questions, with perhaps never knowing what it means to be “saved” or “one of the Elect” and that must mean that I’m not. Because surely real Christians know that.

There is still a little girl inside of me curled up on her bed begging Jesus to protect her from the demons.

Theology

straight and narrow paths, and how I left mine

My experiences with the “moment of salvation,” were, I discovered later, fairly typical among children who grow up in evangelicalism. Many of us grow up pretty familiar with the concepts of Christianity and the principles of the gospel– at least, the Protestant rendering of the gospel. While I am still fairly Protestant in my theology, I can honestly admit that the faith systems of Catholicism and orthodoxy have components that I find attractive– and helpful to understanding my own faith.

However, for kids growing up in an Protestant/evangelical environment, there’s a standard script for us. We pray a prayer, with the help of our parents, usually, somewhere between the ages of 4-7. At some point when we’re slightly older, and we’re more capable of understanding, we look back at the “fuzziness” of what happened when we were 5 and start wondering. Did I actually “get saved”? Did that count? This usually leads into a re-dedication of some type, usually a public announcement that we’re going to commit to God in some way, to serving him more faithfully.

In my experience, the question was articulated to my pastor’s wife as “was I sorry enough?” Did I repent enough? Do I feel bad enough about my sin? I don’t actually remember her response, but I remember not being comforted by it.

I was still plagued by this question when I entered college. Was my repentance genuine? Did I merely say the words because I was afraid of the Rapture, afraid of Hell? Was I foolishly believing in a child’s prayer that really didn’t mean anything?

It took me a long time to realize where these doubts sprang from– they all came from the phrase: “you should check up on your salvation, then!”

These words were repeated to me, from the pulpit, practically every Sunday, and they were always accompanied by a sermon on temptation and sin. The abuser who led our church* would rain down from the pulpit (an area of the stage he called the Holy of Holies, and where no one else in the church was allowed to stand) a vitriolic barrage. He would rage against sin, corruption, unholiness, and temptation, to an extreme so profound it would be impossible to really articulate.

But if you struggled with any kind of continual temptation– if you were addicted to anything, or if you were constantly discontent, or if you couldn’t maintain constant rejoicing, if you were depressed, or if you constantly disobeyed your parents . . . anything in your life that strayed from his conception of a “holy Christian life,” well, then, you should “check up” on your salvation, because you couldn’t possibly be a real Christian if you struggled. Being a Christian meant “conquering” our sin, of being reborn as a “new man,” of “putting off the old man.” If we still had an ongoing battle with “sin,” then, well, Jesus couldn’t be dwelling in your hearts, then, could he?

This constant battering was not limited to my church, either. I went to two separate Christian universities, and people struggling with “doubt” over their salvation, specifically, was a consistent experience. Especially as we got older, because, as adults, we start encountering serious ideas. Calvinism. Arminianism. Molinism. Universalism. Lordship. A lot of terms get thrown around, and when we get confronted with them, it’s usually troubling. We’ve usually been told, quite harshly, that to question anything about our particular system or approach to the gospel is inherently sinful. It’s simply not to be done. This sometimes results in the kids I knew clinging even tighter to their particular brand of a salvation experience.

In graduate school, I somehow ended up in an intense conversation with a young man who was . . . well, an intense adherent to Reformed theology. He asserted that if God is truly sovereign, the reality of our world is one that fits better with Determinism than anything else. It was the first time I had really, honestly tried to understand a different perspective from the mostly-Arminian view I’d grown up with.

The psychological dissonance was so bad I ended up sobbing, hysterically, for three hours.

My point isn’t to make some claim about a “true methodology of Salvation” because I’ve realized that’s… a teensy bit ridiculous. Sorry, Calvin. And Luther. And… basically everyone else who’s ever taught anything about soteriology. I’ve decided that whatever road brings you to God is the road you needed to take, and it doesn’t matter what philosophical word you could apply to it.

My point is that in IFB, in evangelicalism, in most of our different denominations, the human need for questions and answers frequently leads us to where I ended up– in a place so narrowly defined, in a methodology so constricted, that your approach to faith simply can’t be flexible. You’re right, everyone else is just wrong.

At Liberty University, there’s a video that makes fun of the Calvinist-Arminian debates that happen everywhere (not an exaggeration). The video has the two debaters arguing:

Calvinist: You are just quite obviously pre-destined to be wrong!

Arminian: And you have the free will to be stupid!

And . . . that is where most of the debates end up. Because nearly everyone I’ve heard is terrified of being wrong, because, if they’re wrong, then maybe they’re not “saved,” and maybe they’re not going to heaven, and maybe (*gulp*) they’re going to hell. And that’s a “reality” that can’t be faced easily.

A truer reality, I think, is one where you can realize that God loves us all, unconditionally, and that what he most wants from all of us it to have a relationship with him. It’s a “got milk?” question without a whole lot of baggage.

*to this day, I have a difficult time with the word “pastor.” I can use preacher, minister, evangelist, father, reverend . . . but not pastor. “Pastor,” to me, was this man only. He exerted so much control and domination over my life that his demands for absolute loyalty were accompanied by the “right,” he claimed, to call him “Pastor.” That was his identity, and I still can’t break away from it. It causes some psychological tension for me, whenever I mentally think of my church’s leader now, who I simply call “Matt,” although everyone else refers to him as “Pastor Matt.”

Photo by Tim Green
Theology

faith of a child

I’d been in South Carolina for five days when it happened.

My mom and her friend Sandy* had driven up from Florida to attend a ladies’ retreat, which had been entertaining, and then we attended a Revival that week at Sandy’s father’s church. That week, the evangelist preached several “salvation” messages (a message focused on delivering the gospel and an eventual call to the altar to pray the Sinner’s Prayer), leading up to Thursday night. That night, he read A Physicians’ View of the Crucifixion of Christ. It was bloodthirsty, and violent, and terrifying. I’d never heard anything like it.

Jesus did all of that . . . for me? I remember thinking, shocked and horrified at the brutalities he had suffered.

~~~~

I was five years old the first time I encountered the idea of “Jesus coming into your heart.” I was in Sunday school, a few days before Halloween, and I remember the Sunday school teacher turning all of the lights off, and lighting a large pumpkin-scented candle. He described the ancient rites of the Druids, how they would travel from house to house, and the parents would surrender their children for the sacrifice. The druids would lay the little girl on a table, cut her skin off, and burn it over a candle lit in a pumpkin. He said they did this to bring the evil spirits into every home– it was part of the deal the Druids had negotiated to keep the demons away the rest of the year.

But, he said, that didn’t actually work. The only thing that can keep demons away is Jesus. Demons will never bother you if you ask Jesus into your heart to protect you.

I went home, silent. I stayed quiet all day. I didn’t know what to do. How did you ask Jesus to come into your heart? Did you just have to say it? Did you have to burn a candle? Was there a certain way you had to sit, or stand, or kneel?

Halloween came, and I was desperate, terrified. I lay in bed, positive that the shadows would come alive and devour me.

Jesus, please come into my heart. Please. I don’t want the demons to take me away. Please don’t let them get me. Jesus, please, I remember praying for hours that night.

~~~~

I was seven the first time I saw a baptism. I connected the dots and realized that if you’d “prayed to ask Jesus to come into your heart,” then you were supposed to get baptized. I asked my mother, she said we’d talk to someone at church. The lady we talked to took me into another room, away from my mother, and asked me if I’d ever asked Jesus into my heart. I said yes.

She didn’t exactly believe me, if the inquisition that followed was any indication. I didn’t understand what she was talking about. Had I repented? Did I know what hell was? I was bewildered, and then frustrated. The end result was that I didn’t get baptized– until a year later, when I found out what the “answers” to those questions were.

~~~~

So, in South Carolina, when I was eleven, I realized something. I had never really understood any of the answers. I knew how to say the words– I could list off the Roman’s Road with ease, but I’d had no idea what any of it meant. Jesus had died for me. Me. My sin. Mine alone.

Oh.

I knew that what logically followed a revelation like that was “getting saved,” so I decided I’d go down for the altar call I knew was coming in about twenty minutes. Then I stopped- what if the Rapture happens before then? People who knew they were supposed to get saved before the Rapture happens will be given over to a “reprobate mind.” I couldn’t let that happen.

I led myself through the Roman’s Road, right there in the pew, and prayed the Sinner’s Prayer I knew by heart.

~~~~

A dozen years later I was re-examining everything I ever thought I knew. What does it mean to be a Christian? What is this whole “getting saved” business? What’s Arminianism? What is Calvinism– actually, and not what I’d been told Calvinism was by Arminians. Wait– Molinism? That’s interesting.

Hold on, ignore all of that.

What does the Bible say the gospel is?

And, I realized, that, in the Bible, it’s fairly simple. You’re a sinner. God loves you. Jesus is God’s son. He was crucified, and here’s the kicker– he defeated death. He took your sin.

That’s it. It’s really not that complicated. I decided to forget all of the labels, and all of the methods, and all of the processes. I didn’t care any more if I had free will or was predestined, because it’s all the same in the end anyway– at least, when it comes to this. I didn’t care if I had a “lightbulb moment” that I could turn to in moments of “doubting my salvation.” I didn’t need it. I didn’t need a Sinner’s Prayer, or an altar call, or for someone to “declare” me a child of God. I just was. I just am. 

*all names changed

Photo by Nathaniel Hayag