What I needed to do was get out of my own head and read Atonement and Salvation with a little more distance. In truth, it is one the most clear and concise treatments of, really, the whole of Christian theology, I have ever read. While the prose may not be the most elegant you've ever seen, it's clear and insightful - you can tell Vail took great, great care in crafting this book.
What shocked me out of my self-oriented perspective was Chapter 8, where he gets to the real meat of the Atonement and Salvation discussion. Chapter 8 is perhaps the most powerful, important, and accessible chapter of theology I have ever read in any book. It's simply tremendous, maybe not for my personal growth, but as a resource for introducing the average Christian to what has always been a difficult and confusing topic. He builds on all that important preliminary material and crafts a picture of atonement that rings true to experience and reflects the massive, unfathomable love of God, while also taking seriously the whole witness of scripture in really responsible ways.
The final two chapters deal with smaller associated topics, including Christ as peacemaker and a critique of penal substitution theory that both pulls no punches, but also exhibits incredible grace. I began the book wondering who it could possibly be for - it doesn't largely break new ground academically and I couldn't imagine any lay person would want to or be able to work through 141 pages on atonement, but Eric Vail has done it. He presents the theology in an academic and compelling way, but with the deft and simplicity that would allow intent readers of any theological depth to follow the narrative and understand his presentation.
Atonement and Salvation is a real gift to the Church and I'm glad the Nazarene Publishing House continues to cultivate and publish such important material.
A week or so ago I watched Ragamuffin, a movie about Rich Mullins, a Christian singer-songwriter who died in a car crash in the mid-90's. I am not generally a fan of the Christian music industry, and I knew very little about Mullins going in - other than that he was an outsider. He broke the rules and did things his own way (especially eschewing wealth) not worrying about who he might offend.
It's not a typical "Christian" movie - which is a very good thing. There were some clunky acting moments, but the guy they got to play Mullins was phenomenal, and he's in every scene, so that helps. It's also a movie that doesn't wrap things up in a nice bow. There's no soft sell for belief, but a real, honest depiction of someone struggling to make sense of faith in the world. Heck, it ends with a car crash and no resolution!
I found it to be honest and ring true, especially the quote that begins the film,
In the 48 years since I was first ambushed by Jesus, in literally thousands of hours of prayers, meditation, silence and solitude over those years, I am now utterly convinced that on Judgment Day the Lord Jesus is going to ask each of us one question and only one question, “Did you believe that I loved you?
It sort of perfectly encapsulated a post I've been working on for most of the summer.
I grew up in the midst of evangelicalism, so it's been a bit of a lifelong pursuit to figure out exactly how to define Christianity, salvation - to discover a way to define the basics of life following Christ in ways that people will understand and will also satisfy my own conscience. I guess it's been a struggle because we so often confuse things, complicate things, overburdening the gospel in ways that make it unattractive and inaccessible.
I think many of us have now easily moved beyond the old tropes of "say a prayer you really mean and you can go to heaven when you die." We're well beyond the dominance of a logical, orderly system of belief that will be content to live there. At the same time, we've not really hit on something else so simple. We can talk about "living like Jesus" all we want, but that's not an easily definable, understandable, or even agreeable notion across the board.
We're never going to find something everyone agrees on (that's why we've got 3,000 separate Christian denominations out there), but I think we can do better. That quote above goes a long way.
Salvation is an important concept for Christians, because it was important to Jesus, to his Hebrew ancestors, and to his Christian followers. Salvation - being saved - was the center of faith practice. We can go through all the permutations of being saved from what, to what, by whom, how, but in the end, I think just leaving the concept sort of vague makes sense. People might not understand or care to parse all the technical language, but most people recognize (even if they won't admit) there's something in their life they wish wasn't there. Most all of us (and I'd argue "all of us," but we'll save that argument for another day) recognize something in our lives bigger and more powerful than us. We need help.
I think the best way to talk about salvation is to say it comes when you internalize the reality that you are really and truly loved, that you're lovable and worthy of love outside any thing you do or say or are. Salvation comes in knowing love.
That's easier said than done, of course. Knowing and knowing are two different things, right? To really feel that sense of love, acceptance, peace inside is sort of like an impossible fantasy. I can't say I can provide the road map or even great advice - I think most of the time I'm just as much on the journey as anyone else. I do believe with my whole heart, though, that salvation is real and it's possible. I know in my head that I am loved, that all of us is loved, even if I'm never quite sure I know it in my heart.
The quote from the movie comes from a preacher and author, Brennan Manning. He's a great writer to read. He talks about this stuff all the time (the same people who did Ragamuffin are doing a movie about his life, too). He gets at this in the longer version of the quote above:
In the 48 years since I was first ambushed by Jesus, in a little chapel in the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania, and in literally thousands of hours of prayers, meditation, silence and solitude over those years, I am now utterly convinced that on Judgment Day the Lord Jesus is going to ask each of us one question and only one question,
“Did you believe that I loved you? That I desired you? That I waited for you day after day? That I longed to hear the sound of your voice?”
The real believers there will answer, “Yes, Jesus, I believed in your love and I tried to shape my life as a response to it.”
But many of us who are so faithful in our ministry, in our practice, in our churchgoing, are gonna have to reply, “Well frankly, no, sir. I mean I never really believed it. I mean I heard a lot of wonderful sermons and teachings about it. In fact, I gave quite a few myself. But I always thought that was just a way of speaking, a kindly lie, some Christian’s pious pat on the back to cheer me on.”
And there’s the difference between the real believers and the nominal Christians that are found in our churches across the land.
No one can measure like a believer the depth and the intensity of God’s love, but at the same time no one can measure like a believer the effectiveness of our gloom, pessimism, low self-esteem, self-hatred and despair that block God’s way to us.
Do you see why it is so important to lay hold of this basic truth of our faith? Because you’re only going to be as big as your own concept of God.
Remember the famous line of the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal? “God made man in His own image, and man returned the compliment.” We often make God in our own image and he winds up to be as fussy, rude, narrow-minded, legalistic, judgmental, unforgiving, and unloving as we are.
In the past couple three years I’ve preached the Gospel… (all over the world) … and honest to God, the God of so many Christians I meet is a God who is too small for me, because he is not the God of the Word, he is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ who this moment comes right to your seat and says,
“I have a word for you.
I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now, I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship.
And my word is this:
I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are and not as you should be, because you’re never gonna be as you should be.”
Now that sits a little hard for people in my holiness tradition, because we do talk about becoming what we're intended to be. The whole point of sanctification is that we're made whole in Christ through the power of God's Holy Spirit. We've gotten in a lot of trouble in the past talking about sanctification as perfection - because John Wesley, the guy who sort of founded this theological movement, called it "Christian perfection," but even that was a misleading name.
He talked about it as perfection of love - not that we get everything right, but that we make everything right. We're going to screw up and make bad choices, but it's how we respond to those choices - do we double down and keep right on stubbornly hurting ourselves and others, or do we come with humility to fix what we've put wrong. It's a complicated concept, too, one that we continue to argue about hundreds of years later (and one that only seems to get more difficult).
But I do believe in transformation - that somehow, the love of God can make us different. I don't know if it fits all the criteria and academic longings of the theologians, but I do know love changes things. That's precisely how I'd like to define it: if salvation means understanding our inherent loveableness, then sanctification means seeing and understanding the same thing in absolutely everyone else.
We've often talked about it as an orderly process, at the very least one that happens simultaneously. Certainly you must be impacted by love to be changed, but I think the relationship may be less tangible and far more amorphous.
We are constantly doubting our worthiness for love, through our actions, the response we get from others, the mess going on inside our heads, and just the mixed up science of brain chemistry. Life in this world is complicated and it's tough to live in a state of confidence, even if that confidence is in the love of God. At the same time, I hope, we're at least occasionally, if not frequently, exposed to moments of genuine love - times and experiences where we get it, we know we're loved unconditionally - whether it comes from someone else, an emotion, or just the benevolent grace of the universe (that some people might call the working of God).
Those moments can breed compassion - they can help us see even the most vile, offensive, hateful other as a human being not unlike ourselves. Those moments, too, may be fleeting. This isn't the dull weight you feel in your stomach when those horrible guilt-inducing starving child commercials come on the TV - you're supposed to feel that way then - but those moments of total understanding when you should be angry. I'm talking about at least patience, grace when you have every right to be upset. It's feeling a love for someone who doesn't deserve it simply because they're alive.
Now those second experiences may be rare, I don't know. What I do know is they come directly from our own experiences of love. We can relate to others because we relate to being wrong, the enemy, the unworthy, the villain. That's the easy part. Recognizing and expressing that such a villain can and should be loved, even doing the loving, is far more difficult. That's the kind of calling, life that we holiness nutsos are determined to pursue.
I've come to realize, though, these states of being where salvation and sanctification make sense - those times when we really internalize our lovableness and, in turn, those moments where we can truly love the unlovable, well, they come and go. We don't always exist in those states. That's semi-blasphemous for a Nazarene minister to say, but it's definitely what I've observed.
I guess what I'm saying in all this is, so what?
Who's told us we have to be perfect? We might have told ourselves this, of course, but no one else did. I get that we should be growing - we should certainly be more like Jesus today than we were two years ago, but we don't actually have to be Jesus. In faith we believe that's down the line somewhere, but not until after some serious divine intervention. Holiness people believe we can be in right relationship with God here and now - we can be the kind of people we'll be in "heaven" (whatever that means to you) here and now - but what if that relationship, that sanctified state of being, is simply someone who's learning? What if it just means we're working to accept and live into our status as beloved and working to treat others the same way. What if this moving back and forth between success and seeming failure is really all success?
Because if we beat ourselves up about not being good enough, not acting out the sanctified life we're supposed to have, we're just going to wind up back at the beginning of Brennan Manning's quote - where we don't really, deep down, believe God loves us. Trying too hard to be sanctified might just keep us from living in the joy of salvation.
So when people ask what it means to be a Christian, I think I'm just gonna say: "learning to believe you're worth loving," and let God take care of the rest.
If I think about a decision (and, boy do I think - it's taken me 18 months to replace a pair of shoes, and that is not at all an exaggeration), really mull it over and choose what I think it best, then I'm ok with failure. I might replay it over and over for a while to try and learn from the mistake for the future, but I'm generally ok. If I make the wrong choice without having spent time considering it, I will dwell on it for days - even something very simple.
There's a lot of guilt in my life. Mentally, intellectually, I completely understand it's unearned. I recognize people make mistakes and no one's perfect, and all that stuff. It just doesn't feel that way in the moment. I tend to respond with self-loathing or abject rage, at the very least a strong sense of embarrassment.
I've been seeing a counselor lately, to try and weed through these various threads connecting my past and my actions and my thoughts and emotions. It's been helpful. Of course this process also brings with it a fair bit of introspection. I've always spent a lot of time thinking about why I do things. Now I spend even more.
This week I've been thinking about the tension that exists growing up in the Church of the Nazarene and our particular ways of speaking about holiness. (For those who don't know, holiness is, pretty much, the reason our denomination exists.) My upbringing was pretty typical of an evangelical holiness tradition. We were taught people should be saved, basically intellectual assent to the idea of Jesus as God and savior of the world. Beyond that, though, there's also this thing called sanctification, a miracle working of God's Holy Spirit that cleanses one of a propensity to sin - not that you become perfect, but given a choice, you're capable of choosing good. This new life is called holiness.
There are a lot of intricacies that go into the explanation of this process for our tribe - something I have no desire or time to go into here - but this was the basic outline of my understanding of life and faith. This sanctification part was always kind of mysterious to me. I got that it didn't make you sinless or perfect, but that there was some real change wrought supernaturally in a person. Something noticeable and real.
I'm not sure I ever really bought into that kind of thing until it happened to me. Shortly after college I was pretty directionless. I'd never planned for my life after college and I felt pretty purposeless. I was listening to a band rehearsing some worship music and was simply struck by a feeling of hopelessness - an emotional/spiritual rock-bottom, as if my attempt to run my own life had finally and completely run its course. I spent close to an hour just weeping and admitting to myself and God that I could not do life on my own. I needed someone else to make the decisions. When the night was over, I felt different. I was changed. A lot of things changed. Parts of my personality were forever altered. I was different. I believe that.
But it wasn't the kind of different I expected from my upbringing. It was a different different.
Part of that experience, or shortly thereafter, was a calling to preach. Within 18 months, I'd gotten married and we'd moved to Kansas City where I was attending seminary. This was a great experience and a real chance to explore exactly what all of this meant. I got to reading scripture more closely. I got to read John Wesley (the guy from whom all of this particular take on holiness descends). I made a lot of discoveries.
Most importantly, I saw how John Wesley described "entire sanctification." It wasn't all that different from how I'd been taught. I found, however, that Wesley never claimed sanctification for himself; beyond that he guessed perhaps no more than a handful of people in all of England (where he lived) had ever been entirely sanctified, and, if so, they only maintained it for a few weeks. This was quite different from what I'd been taught. In fact, the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene, to this day, requires a testimony of entire sanctification even for service on a local congregational governing board.
Throughout the process of my schooling and training I underwent annual interviews for a minister's license and, ultimately, for ordination. I think there were eight interviews total. Holiness came up in a lot of them. I don't think I ever claimed to be sanctified (although early on I may have checked the box out of habit). I relayed pretty much everything I've included here and those boards were satisfied I met the requirement.
The more I look at it though, the more it seems my experience lines up much more with what Wesley called salvation. He was a long-time priest before he had what he called a salvation experience. Intellectual assent was not enough for him. This moment of transformation, when your heart and will are turned away from self-interest and towards God, Wesley called that becoming a Christian. That's pretty similar to the way it was described in my seminary theology classes, too. Dr. Tom Noble, one of the greatest and smartest men I've ever known, told us that if one's will is not aligned with God's, then you're probably not yet saved.
Dr. Nobel is also the only person I've met who was actually able to describe what a second work, beyond that salvation experience might look like. He knows what he believes about sanctification and how it differs from salvation. I'll be honest, I believe he knows what he's talking about, but I was never able to understand it - and I've spent a lot of time trying.
I've had that experience I was always taught I needed, but it certainly didn't feel like what they said. Oh, sure, there have been times, sometimes quite extended periods, where I've felt like I was supposed to - like I could make the right decision, even if it was difficult and succeed at doing it over and over again. But that hasn't been my experience at all times.
I'll admit it. Sometimes I know the good I ought to do and I don't do it. That's sin (almost word for word from the Bible).
While I'm fairly certain a few people can exist on that plane of holiness, the way I was taught, I'm fairly confident that most of the people in our denomination required to testify to that experience probably aren't - at least not all the time.
Don't get me wrong. I believe in holiness. I believe God can and does change us, as we allow, over time into people more like Christ, people who think less about themselves and more towards the needs of others, people who love unconditionally and are willing to suffer with those who suffer. It's part of this crisis/process debate we Nazarenes have been having for some time. It's not difficult to see the process and it's not difficult to see the crisis, but it's awfully difficult to see how this works out practically.
This standard of holiness is sort of used and not used when it's convenient. As adults we sort of understand the practical nature of grace and responsibility. Life is messy and things aren't always cut and dry. It makes sense rationally. But that rational part of my brain is having a hard time dealing with the part of my brain raised with the notion of perfection as the goal. We Nazarenes do a good job of clarifying our terminology - sin doesn't quite mean what most people take it to mean, and neither does perfection. I get that, too. But I didn't always get it. Those early lessons are hard to overcome.
Now I'm not blaming my psychological issues solely on theology - there is a lot of other personal stuff that goes along with it - at the same time, it sure doesn't help. If a person believes perfection is the expectation, then they are never good enough and always a failure. It seems as though people feel that way enough on their own, without (even unintentional) religious practice reinforcing it. The gospel really tells people the opposite: we are all good enough; we are all loved and valuable and important; even if we fail and fall short we are still loved.
That doesn't absolve us of responsibility or exempt us from facing the consequences of our actions, but it does speak to our fundamental value as people.
I'm not sure my tribe has done a very good job of forming ourselves around that idea. The very holiness we talk about so much is really only possible once we get over the notion that we can get it all right. We've always been very good about making that clear for people... until they're sanctified, then there's an expectation that those days are over. Like I said, it may very well work that way for some people - it hasn't for me, and I'm guessing I'm not alone.
It's strange that I've felt nervous writing this whole time. It's not a big deal to admit I'm not perfect, or at least it shouldn't be - but, as an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene, it sort of feels like it is. Even by that definition which exempts unintentional mistakes from perfection, I'm still not perfect. I choose selfishly all the time, to the detriment of my family and friends. I do so willingly, sometimes even knowing it's wrong when I do it.
I recognize how that fits theologically and I can put it within the framework outlines above. I know how it works within notions of holiness - I am definitely more Christ-like now than I was last week or last year, let alone a decade ago. I'm just not as good as I always believed I should be. I don't think I'm as good as the Manual of my denomination expects me to be.
I know we're often a gracious people. I've experienced it time and again. We're certainly better at dealing with people honestly than we've been in the past. But what we say, in writing, and what we do, in practice, don't really line up that well with each other. It's harmed me in the past. I know it's harmed others. I suspect this implied expectation of perfection has been behind a lot of trouble our denomination has had in recent years. We're just not able to cut each other slack because we've always held this notion of perfection up as right to rule - the most holy people are the ones in charge, so the ones in charge must, at least, appear holier than everyone else.
I know that's not who we are at our core, but it's sure who we appear to be.
I'm not sure if or how long it might take to get over these mental blocks in my head constantly telling me I need to be perfect, that preventable mistakes are wrong and make me less valuable. I doubt I'm alone in battling these lies. But perhaps it's time to just admit we're human.
When I tell people what exactly we mean by holiness, I often say we believe that we can live the kind of life God intends for us to live right here and right now - we don't have to wait for heaven. I believe that. I'm just less and less convinced that life looks like one without error. I suspect it's more likely a life in which love and grace can be expected at all times.
I know we don't live in a world where that's true, but perhaps we should be able to be part of a Church where it is.
This would be big news in our denomination - not exactly the norm - but he found it had a profound impact on the congregation. He had dozens of couples come up to him and thank him for his honesty and reveal that his words gave them the freedom to think through their habits - most of their drinking was inculturated through their extended family and had always been part of their lives. Now, they were noticing for the first time how adversely it had affected their loved ones and felt called to give it up.
This phenomenon is seen in many ways and places. I know Peter Rollins has written about the power of the prohibition. The very fact something is forbidden can give it power over us; when it is permitted, we no longer feel the need to do it.
This pastor was asking my advice, not about how this had worked in his congregation, but in how this was manifesting itself in a very particular situation among the leadership. There was a man in the congregation who had a very powerful encounter with God that had clearly and obviously transformed his life. He had become one of the spiritual giants in the congregation and many leaders wanted to nominate him for the governing board of the congregation. The only problem was that he smoked. Not that he was struggling to quit an unhealthy addiction, but that he'd "talked it over with God" and didn't feel any pull on his conscience to quit. He felt God was fine with it - the board was less fine with it. They wanted to raise up leaders who were wholistic examples.
At the time, it seemed like an easy solution. The guy is clearly and obviously a spiritual leader, his life and actions speak to it, you can let the smoking go. Perhaps it even opens an opportunity to talk to him about conforming not just to his own conscience, but the collective conscience of God's people.
As I look back on the situation now, I'm more troubled by the attitude that "God and me are ok, that's what matters," than the smoking. It certainly does matter, but it belies a problem inherent in contemporary Western Christianity that continues to beat us down and defeat us: namely individualistic faith.
The entirely of evangelicalism came out of the emphasis on a personal savior. One must encounter God in such a way that she recognizes her own sin and the goodness and grace of God and accepts Jesus as personal savior: we must understand that God loves us and wants us to be different and allow God to make us different. I've often heard it said, "if you were the only one on Earth, Jesus would still die for you."
Unfortunately we take this image of a personal savior and prioritize our own interior spiritual life over all else. It makes our faith completely about satisfying ourselves. We don't often do this intentionally, but it dovetails nicely with the culture in which we live, so it happens seamlessly and without notice. We live in a culture obsessed with self-sufficiency. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. It's all about you making a life for yourself depending on no one, no one telling me what to do.
Evangelicalism countered that with the notion that we all need Jesus. We can't succeed without Jesus, we can't have the life we want without Jesus, we have to depend on Jesus and let Jesus call the shots. For those of us steeped in the American ideal, we simply added Jesus to our individual mix. Now, instead of the lone ranger, we're roaming the range with Jesus - just the two of us. Jesus become the vehicle through which we can achieve the American dream of individual liberty.
The problem is, things really don't work that way. It leads to this hyper-individualized, consumer culture where everything must meet our unique and individual satisfaction. I love the fit, length, and cut of these jeans, but the color is just a shade off - so I'll look in this pile next to them for exactly the right ones. It spills over into our faith life as well. This congregation believes 99% of what I do, but that 1% is important, so I'll go find a better fit - or start a congregation of my own - or, who needs a congregation? Me and Jesus can make it alone.
People separate from the body of Christ over music or preaching styles, over political predilections or some rude remark overheard in the hall. People separate because they've been asked to change their behavior, maybe to quit smoking, even though they've talked to God and God is fine with it. My personal savior has okay-ed this, therefore you have no right to tell me it's wrong.
This emphasis on a personal savior has put us in the center of the world. Even those of us able to muster the humility to actually listen when God speaks (not something I do better than reluctantly), things still revolve around us.
I wonder if it wouldn't be better for us to flip the situation on its head. I am an evangelical after all, I do still think it's important for people to have personal, transformational encounters with God that result in real relationship and a changed life. But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to ditch the personal savior language.
What if we called people not to accept Jesus as a personal savior, but to accept God's invitation to be personal servants?
When we become God's personal servant, the center of the relationship shifts. We are not the one with ownership (Jesus is MY savior) - we belong to God (I am GOD'S servant). God becomes central. We're no longer obsessed with out own goals - happiness, fulfillment, peace in our lives, but we become focused on God's mission: restoring to the world it's creative purpose. We can't help but be focused elsewhere. Our own personal life becomes important only as it serves God's larger mission.
I'm pretty sure Jesus is the kind of guy who, if you were the only person on Earth, would still die for you - that's sort of the heart of the gospel. However, you're not the only person on Earth and you're not the only person for whom Jesus died. I have to recognize that I'm not God's only servant and my relationship with Jesus, though special, is not better or more intense or a higher priority than anyone else's.
It is certainly subservient to the collective wisdom of all God's servants joined together in this thing called the Church. We are God's personal servants, but so is every other person who accepts God's call. God is using each of us, in obedience, to remake and restore the world - therefore, we have to work together. We can't just up and leave at the drop of a hat or the hurt of a feeling. Not least because we're not in control of our lives - God is - but also because our life together, getting those relationships right, is the bedrock of God's plan of redemption. To some extent (and always to a greater extent than we're comfortable with), the Church is also in control of our lives.
This runs directly counter to our cultural understanding of individualism and freedom. We're giving up that freedom, so hard fought and won over the course of history, to indenture ourselves to God. This is exactly what Paul means when he talks about being slaves to Christ. We move from being slaves to sin (where we think we're free because nothing is off-limits) to being slaves of Christ (where we find true freedom, not because all options are open, but because we discover our created purpose in the world, we find the niche into which we fit perfectly).
Of course this still leaves room for us to call the shots. I can still say, "as God's personal servant, God hasn't asked me to do this," why would you ask me to do something God hasn't asked? We can still make it about individualism. This personal relationship with God, whether as your savior or as God's servant, is only part of the equation. God has other servants. God has specifically designed and designated us to work together. God often speaks to different servants in different ways about different things. If we're going to accept our role as servant of God, we also have to accept that we're not always in the center of the action. We have to learn to trust each other and especially the collective gathering of God's servants called the Church.
