Getting "saved".
(but saved from what?)
Last month I did an hour long “ask me anything” on Notes…it felt like theological speed dating. You can read it all here:
But there were SO MANY questions I couldn’t get to in an hour, so I thought I would pull a few out and answer them here!
John asked:
What does the language of “saved” mean to you? I’ve struggled to understand this, although it seems like there is a subjective experience there.
Dear John,
When I was a 12 year-old girl in white Sunday School shoes, I used those already too-small shoes to walk my skinny self right down the aisle of our church during the altar call. I chose that day to be baptized, not because the Spirit moved in me, but because a) I was scared not to and, b) all the college kids were home from school that weekend and I knew this meant I would get a lot of attention from some teenagers I looked up to.
But what it was called was “getting saved”.
But saved from what?
Saved, I guess, from spending eternity in the burning fires of an imaginary hell.
Threatening people with an eternally terrifying (but ultimately unverifiable) punishment if they, you know, like, remain gay, or watch porn, or ordain women to the priesthood, or question what the church is telling them is true, etc … is genius if your goal is to control them.
What is NEXT LEVEL genius is telling young people that if they don’t get all their friends, and even strangers they meet to also get saved by “accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior” (but mostly just adopting a so-called “Christian” lifestyle) then those people are in danger of eternal torment. And it’s your fault for not being brave enough to “witness” to them. ETERNAL TORMENT. I mean, there are generations of us out there who, at 14 years of age weren’t responsible enough to not leave our orthodontic retainers on a tray at Burger King, and yet thought we could be responsible for the souls of our “non-Christian” friends.
But John, I want to say here that I have the deepest love and compassion for my girl-self. I do not judge her. And as snarky as I am, I actually have a deep love and compassion for the church that taught me all the ideas I later rejected. I trust that they believed all of it, and as such, acted in the way they thought was loving.
I left the church when I was still a teenager. But years ago, I had a parishioner who had, as a woman in her 40s, JUST exited conservative Evangelicalism and was driven to distraction by her rage-y response to what folks from her old church were posting on FB. She noticed I didn’t seem to have the anger she did, and asked how I managed that.
“They gave me a very dualistic world view: good/bad, saved/lost, us/them, etc.. I guess I felt free from the anger about my fundamentalist upbringing when I could look back on it and not view IT dualistically,” I replied. “When I could look back and name some things about being raised in the church as beautiful without doing so feeling like a betrayal of the parts of me that had been wounded by the ugly stuff, then I was free”.
So, John, what does “saved” mean to me?
Being saved from the totally made-up burdens of the existential nightmare of Hell.
But also being saved from my own anger and bitterness about all of it. (that is a process)
Saved from my need to be right about this.
Saved from self-obsession.
Saved from my addictions.
Saved from dualistic thinking.
Saved from thinking that I have to get all my needs me through shit I can buy.
The root word for salvation in Greek is sozo which means wholeness.
I love that, John. Because that I could use. I could use the repairing of fractured relationships. I could use the bringing back together of mind, body and spirit. I could use every reminder I can get that I am already whole. There isn’t a supplement or elimination diet, or guru that can make me what I already am: Saved. Whole. Loved.
I think this is what Jesus came to show us/offer us. That loving God and neighbor is wholeness.
Sometimes I’ll meet a sweet Evangelical who will asked “when were you saved?” to which I respond: just again this morning.
Or sometimes, oh I guess it was like…what…over 2,000 years ago now!
Wishing you wholeness.
Nadia
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So, at the moment (at least in the United States) there's a TV commercial with Jennifer Coolidge walking through a grocery store being her delightfully unhinged, confused, but good-hearted self as she talks to her body guard. He gently offers corrections about what his role is and what his role isn't. The closing lines:
"Then what do YOU protect me from?"
"Mostly yourself."
That's my current thought, feeling, and experience of being saved. Saved from what? Mostly myself.
(The commercial referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuqgrMJD-4Y)
I realize I have a very particular, mystical relationship to God because I grew up Quaker. Also, we don't do the sacraments. But I did sing in a choir for a bunch of years that had a repertoire that was entirely spirituals and gospel. And I always felt like channeling Spirit while singing that music was the same process as standing up to give vocal ministry in Silent Meeting, just with musical accompaniment. So, I would get really into it, and periodically someone would note my enthusiasm and ask me if I'd been saved. My simple response, which I hope was not taken as being flippant because that wasn't my intention, was "God never lost me."