Salvation

More interesting (and more helpful) than listing all of the theories and pictures of the cross I find to be unhelpful and not useful are the ways that the cross can be helpful. I believe that the cross meets us at our deepest need to bring about far more than personal salvation power. Additionally, and in quite the ironic way, the cross meets individuals and whole groups of people to transform them where they are. Although I believe there is a mystical absolution that happened and happens when we look at salvation as personally removing my guilt and your sin and shame, it is much much bigger. This is how most of us have come to a basic knowledge of God and salvation and of the cross. Jesus paid the debt we owed with our lives. He took our sin, though he himself was sinless, and out of reverent joy and gratitude we owe God our lives. We deserved to be on the tree and it was indeed our wrongdoings that nailed Jesus at Calvary. This is usually also where many people start the story of God, humans and the bible. I won’t get into that part as much — that we’re actually originally blessed and originally loved before any of the “original sin” business; that God’s first word over humanity was a loving “good!” and not a disappointed “bad!”. 

We have dug ourselves into a hole, my friends. Because we got what we asked for. We wanted a personalized and individualized salvation that was preoccupied with getting me saved (“if you died tonight, where do you think you would go?!”) and getting myself right with God. This is precisely how we ended up with the double edged sword that we are somehow surprised to encounter when we inevitably wind up coming face to face with shame, loneliness, boredom, and religious busyness. Because when you’re the only one God sees, you’re the only one God sees. You’re the only one you see. You’re the only one everyone else sees. You are consumed and trapped in the prison you designed. When we’re taught to think that your sin is the biggest agenda item on God’s eternal planner, you’re first in line to pay the price. Then, we’re relieved and feel high on the fumes of affection when we are told that God has a special plan just for you and was thinking of you on the cross. That you’re the only one God sees in a room full of people. This is beautiful, until you cheat on your taxes or embarrass yourself by getting drunk at your Aunt’s third wedding or feel guilty for using your friend’s netflix account. Then, God is only paying attention to you…still. You can’t get rid of the God that you wanted to be with you every waking moment only thinking about and paying attention to your needs every moment you decide you’d like to slip into a consciously aware state of reality. You can’t shake that God. You can’t hide. It builds in a fear and a guilt and a self absorption that can honestly drive you manic. 

I think the cross is different, though, because I no longer see myself as the target of God’s wrath or greatest love affair. I know that Christ has, through the cross, demonstrated a great love for me that I’ll never quite comprehend. Yet, this mystery is a greater symbol. It’s a sign. It’s a metaphor. It is brimming with the truth that Love is demonstrative, radical, inclusive (because it included me, after all), and messy. That God is up to bigger things than just saving my soul from a place later down the road; God is saving, reconciling, redeeming the whole of the cosmic order back to the way things are meant to be– including me. The plants, parakeets, pacific ocean and portland will all be covered with glory as water covers the bathtub. You’ll be there, if you want to be, and so will I. It’ll be kind of like a garden. More real than real. Not because God had to, but because God wanted to. It’ll be like it was there the whole time and we now just have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the hearts to understand. 

The cross is important because it reveals the hearts of humans. That we can be cruel and empty and capable of horrible things; but that we also are loved and invited into the Real of Life. That this Ground of Being courses through the veins of the world like electricity. Like Light. Like Fire. Like Wind. It puts things back to rights with ourselves, each other and God. It reveals that the weak ones are blessed. That God cannot really be named, pinned down, and systematized like we thought. God upends the powers and rulers of the world with the weakness, foolishness, and frailty of surrender and right-ness. The cross is bigger than me… Bigger than you… It’s big enough for the swallows, surf and plumerias. It’s big enough for my dog, laughter, and pain. It’s big enough for the universe.

I think we’re very scared. Very bored. Very unimaginative. Very calloused. Very empty. We’re still obsessed with “winning”, power, and money. I’m still preoccupied with appearance, status and empire. We all are. Some of us just paint with a religious brush (which is more disgusting — church politics, popularity and piety is overrated) and are dying on the inside to not care what people think. We hide behind screens and wonder why we think God is mad because we masturbated. Because it’s still about you. It’s still about the small, insignificant, truncated vision of life, God, and salvation you’ve been talked into. It’s time to learn from the path that brought you to this moment, kindly thank it for helping in the ways it did, and release it as you journey into the next phase of life in God — resting, loving, entrusting, death/rebirth, and mercy.

 Thank God it’s bigger than me and you and our little worlds. Thank God salvation is freedom from all sorts of things including all the things that destroy us — even ourselves.