Saved

I’m not so much into “getting saved” anymore.

I can’t recall the last time I talked or thought about it.

This is big news. “Being saved” was all I could talk or think about back in 1987. I was 11 years old.

But how to “get saved,” “stay saved,” and “save others” was what all of us in the Church of Christ talked about back then. I may have been in kindergarten the first time I asked my mom if I was saved. I asked my parents that question again and again and again until I was 11 years old.

I had nightmares about Judgment Day. In one nightmare, I was in the backyard playing with toys as most 11-year old boys do. Suddenly, a loud trumpet blast shook the earth! Jesus appeared in the sky. I left the ground and floated up in the air to meet him. I watched my neighborhood drift away below as I rose higher and higher. I was horrified to see that I was the only going to meet Jesus. Everyone else was still going about their lives down on the ground below. Jesus looked inhuman. His skin glowed like molten metal and his eyes were fire. His mouth looked like a grizzly trap. As I came close to meet him, I saw hatred. I saw rage.

I awoke screaming and sweating.

I told my best friend, Jimmy, about the nightmare. He began having nightmares, too.

What must we do to be saved? we asked each other.

On March 4, 1987, Jimmy and I decided to do something about it. That night, we asked my dad to baptize us “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit for the remission of sins.”

As we say in the Church of Christ, we “got saved” that night.

But that was not the end of feeling unsafe. Because in the Church of Christ, we didn’t just talk about getting saved; we talked about staying saved. It turned out that getting baptized was the easy part.

For the next ten years or so, I got caught up in two obsessions common to Church of Christ folks back then.

The first obsession was staying saved by staying in the correct church. God would soon pour out his wrath, but people who were in the correct church would survive.

What was the “correct church”?

It is too simple to say that we thought the Church of Christ was the correct church. We could not agree on which Church of Christ congregations “did church” correctly! Church of Christ congregations erupted and split over things like whether it was OK to have a kitchen in the church building.

I got caught up in this. Picking the “correct church” was as high-stakes as picking the right ark when the flood waters started to rise. My congregation had a kitchen. Did that kitchen make the congregation false toward God? Would it be the source of my damnation?

The second obsession was staying saved by staying right with God. That mostly meant being perfect inside and out. It meant doing the right things, but also feeling and thinking the right things, too. At all times.

The timing of my baptism was poor. Within two years, my teen hormones turned my mind into a 24-hour peep show. No matter how hard I tried to “turn my eyes upon Jesus,” my thoughts kept turning back to breasts. I begged God to take away my sexuality.

A common question that came up in a lot of Church of Christ Bible studies was this one: “If I was driving down the road and a truck crossed the median and hit me head-on and I screamed out a cuss word the instant I got killed, would I go to hell?”

What we were really asking is if “saved” is slippery. Like many of the Christians around me at that time, I believed that I had to pray away my sins to “stay saved.” If I died or Jesus came back the moment I sinned, my sin would still be “on the books.” I would go to hell. I went through my days praying for forgiveness every few minutes just to be safe. I dreaded going to sleep at night. What if I had a dream about sex? What if Jesus came back in the middle of my dream or while I was still sleeping? How would I pray for forgiveness in time to be saved?

Is it any wonder that I ended up in therapy by the time I was 25?

Many people who came up in the Church of Christ back then had trouble believing they were saved. Many of them asked to be baptized a second or even third time “just to be sure.” I believe Jimmy “got re-baptized.” I thought about it, too, more than once.

In my early 20s, I burned out. One day, I thought: If salvation is so conditional, so doubtful, so fragile, so questionable, so temperamental, so unknowable…what good is it? Is it really salvation at all?

I said to God, out loud: “I can’t do this. I’ve been trying for years and I just can’t do it. I give up! If you want me, you can have me just as I am. If you don’t want me just as I am, I don’t see how I’m going to change your mind. So take me or leave me.”

When I said that anti-prayer, the sun came out. I felt like the Spirit spoke directly into my soul: “I do take you as you are, because you as you are is just who I want. ‘Life to the full’ is what I said I want to give you, so leave the salvation to me and start enjoying your life. It’s my gift to you. That is what it means to be saved. That is what I made the Gospel to do for people!”

That day was the last time I worried about getting and staying saved.

When I was still young, the anniversary of my baptism was a day that I thought about how badly I was failing God. I would go away to a lonely place and write out long letters that listed all of my sins. I would end those letters with promises to do better.

But when March 4 came around again, I was always the same sinner.

Now, March 4 is a day for me to give thanks for God’s salvation that is sure because God’s love is sure.

Instead of writing long lists of my failures, I open the Holy Scriptures and let the salvation of God flow through me like a Van Halen guitar riff.

Here is the text I’m reading on this March 4:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:3-14).

Look at the words the ancient Christian teacher chose to talk about what God does for us before we do anything for God:

Blessed.

Chose.

Destined.

Adoption as his children.

Good pleasure of his will.

Freely bestowed.

Riches of his grace.

Lavished on us.

Made known to us the mystery of his will.

His good pleasure.

Does this sound like a God who leaves us alone in our fears and worries?

Does this sound like a God who would leave our salvation in doubt?

The “praise of his glory” in the last line does not come from people figuring out God’s rules and following them perfectly. The “praise of his glory” comes to God when he goes as far as it takes to save people come hell or high water. It is God’s grace that makes him worthy of praise.

The world will not praise God for his rules; it will praise him for his grace and love that gathers up all things on earth and heaven and makes them part of his family forever. A God who tells the world how to save itself is no better than the pagan gods; but a God who saves the world in spite of itself is a God who is worthy of praise and thanks.

I said I don’t talk or think much about getting and staying saved anymore.

That is because God is doing the saving and making it sure.

All that leaves for me to do is enjoy this life that is a gift from God, give thanks for it, and remind you that it is there for you, too.

Grace and peace.