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28 June
Sacramento, Ca.
One of the greatest controversies that divides the Christian family, sometimes with alarming tenacity, is –well, OK, it’s
one controversy divided into three parts:
1a) who among us is “saved”
1b) what one must do in order to be saved
1c) whether or not one can lose one’s salvation once it is given
On issue 1a) there is a great deal of disagreement among denominations, but an amazing consensus about one point:
not everyone is saved. This despite the fact that Jesus Christ is said to have died an atoning death for all men and
women, and that “all” in the original Greek means….”all,” and that His love is infinite. Every denomination that I know of
agrees with that, but they also agree that you have to do something in order to reap the benefits. In other words, your
parking has been validated, but you still need to get your ticket stamped –no stamp, no free parking.
What one must do to get that ticket stamped, issue 1b), is where the denominations start to fracture into their own
camps. There is a truly amazing range of philosophies here, the adherents of each one claiming absolute Biblical
authority for their particular program. To shed some light on the reasons why this is so contentious would require a
great deal of time and ink spent dissecting Christian theology; if you are not Christian, you do not need to know it all
and, understandably, probably don’t want to hear it anyway; if you are Christian, then you know exactly what I am talking
about. Every church confronts this denominational conflict; none are immune.
In the Calvary Chapel network, they keep it very simple: if you are “born again,” you are saved, and the way you are
born again is to call upon Jesus Christ, admit that you are a sinner in need of salvation, and ask Him to come into your
heart and be your Savior. That’s it. That seals the deal, simple as that. (Well, not exactly, because you have to be
sincere about it. That means you can’t do it when you’re in a drunken stupor, and you wake up the next morning
thinking, “What the hell did I do last night?” And you can’t do it when your wife has one foot out the door and she’s
leaving you forever if you don’t control your lustful appetites. In other words, it’s not the words per se, it is the sincerity
of the desire for salvation. Fortunately, they understand that this is between the individual and God, and if you tell them
you are born again they will generally believe you –unless there is probable cause. If it seems, for instance, that ten
minutes after you asked Jesus to be your Savior, you told Him He could kiss your ass and went on to be as much of a
screwhead as ever, you probably weren’t being very sincere.)
You would think that this “non-denominational” church would therefore teach that all Christians who make a sincere plea
to Jesus for salvation are saved, but suddenly it’s not so simple anymore. There are certain denominations whose
baptismal waters are murky, we are told, and they who enter should beware that their salvation is not a done deal.
These include 1) non-Biblian churches (because it is actually the Christian Bible that saves us, not Christ, right?) and 2)
all churches that teach that there are other or additional requirements to get one’s ticket stamped. I would think that to
the latter category, born-agains would just say, “Hey, you called upon His name, and you meant it, so you don’t need all
the rigmarole.” But no, I’ve personally heard fellow Christians in Ashland say that people of these denominations “think
they are saved,” but aren’t, presumably because they don’t trust Jesus to do the job by Himself. Here’s a partial list of
the unsaved Christian camps, based only upon what I’ve heard or read: Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Methodists (including Wesleyans I presume). Keep in mind of
course that individuals may be “OK” within these churches if their belief is sincere enough and scripturally sound, ie. Mel
Gibson the “born-again Catholic.” I haven’t spent enough time around these churches to know what their specific
rebuttals to the born-agains are, but I’m sure they are “Biblically authorized” too.
Now that we’ve narrowed down the list of who’s saved and who’s not, we still have to touch on a very contentious issue
that can even divide denominations and individual churches into separate camps: can a saved Christian lose his/her
salvation?
Everyone has a different outlook on this. I don’t know enough about the various denominations to outline who says
what, and it’s not terribly important. At ACF, the official teaching is a flat NO –“once saved, always saved” is the mantra
there. As another good friend and associate pastor puts it, “If I could screw up my own salvation, I would.” But I know a
few people at ACF –all women—who are mildly enraged when this topic comes up. They know, for instance, that there
are “saved” men in our midst who use pornography, or cheat on their wives, or drink like fish etc, and they must have
some nerve to go around cavorting like that in the flesh while resting on their Blessed Assurance (or Blessed Ass for
short) spiritually. ACF would counter that by saying without the Blessed Ass, we would have to rest on our fallen nature
to stay in God’s good graces, and that is contrary to what the whole salvation arrangement is all about. Fine, they say,
maybe the proof is in the pudding: if you say that you’re saved and you’re defrauding people of large sums of money
like Jim Bakker, or you’re out there whore-chasing like Jimmy Swaggart, then maybe you weren’t all that sincere when
you called to Him.
On and on it can go, both sides making points that seem to be valid from a limited perspective, never finding resolution
because neither side is willing to enlarge its perspective and see that the other side is just as desperate to feel loved by
God –saved—as they are. In doing so, however, we display our own unregenerate humanness more than
ever –we make God’s infinite love into something that must be obtained, like a stamp of approval. We
confuse the very real “narrow path” of God’s higher calling for the infinitely wide “path” of living in God’s
love, and that, more than anything else, has caused centuries of needless strife, woe and the deep grief of
the Spirit that comes from needing to be right at the expense of someone else’s wrong. Every orthodox
religion does this to some degree, but we see it at its most divisive –and destructive—with the “Peoples of the Book:”
Muslims, Jews and Christians.
I’ll address that when I come back to the main thread of our inquiry. There are some local issues to deal with first. I’m
about to arrive in Ashland. Here (but for the grace of God) I go. HC– Ashland, Ore.
© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water Production
Next -- Chapter 18
