Modern American evangelism makes much of the phrase “get saved.” It seems we’ve talked about getting saved and salvation for many years. So many years, in fact, that we have made the concept both cliche and meaningless. Ask the average postmodern twenty-something, or beer-gut bubba if he is saved and you’re likely to get a blank stare at best. He may even return, “Saved from what?”
Saved from what indeed. The classic evangelical line, developed primarily in the last century, has us in imminent danger of hell fire and needing to be saved from that so we can go to heaven when we die. The entire concept revolves around the afterlife, where we will live in eternity in disembodied spirits, either in torment or in heavenly bliss.
I see the problem as three-fold, all of them offensive to our masculine identities.
First, we have come to the place where we speak in figures of speech supposedly well known in the church world but not well known to those we might hope to reach. Our cliches are like a foreign language, speaking in tongues if you will, to people who are non-religious. I make a point of NOT speaking in what my daughters call “church language.” Besides, these expressions tend to lose their meaning among believers too.
Second, the get-saved-to-go-to-heaven-when-you-die concept comes directly from Greek mythology, particularly gnosticism, where spirit is good and material evil. We will go away from this evil earth to a heavenly place, sing in heavenly choirs, and live in a mansion on a gold street. Pardon the cliche, but we are so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. The problem with this is that it offends the masculine destiny of making something of the earth now. It is totally foreign to Hebrew thought, the intentions of all who wrote the Bible. Jesus died on the cross to redeem the creation to himself, the creation that God pronounced good. The kingdom on earth is the process of redeeming the earth from the devil’s influence. The resurrection and life-after-death will occur on earth, as God intended from the beginning.
The third and most offensive to our masculinity is the aspect of being saved itself. As if we are totally powerless. Damsels in distress. Effiminate wimps. This too is totally foreign to Hebrew thought. To the writers of Scripture salvation means the lending of strength to get you out of a jam. It is a military idea referring to a predicament an army gets into from time to time, and the much-needed help from reinforcements that changes the equation and turns certain defeat into glorious victory.
Applying it to our spiritual lives salvation means we find ourselves away from God and unable to live for him. We may have self-defeating habits and behaviors we cannot change on our own. We call upon the name of the Lord and he delivers us by sending the reinforcements of his grace, the power to do what we cannot do for ourselves. You do not have to pray a “sinner’s prayer” (invented by 20th century evangelists, by the way) or confess all the bad things you have ever done. The Bible is clear. We call upon the name of the Lord. We look for his grace. We wrestle with the flesh within and crucify it.
God does not intend to emasculate us. On the contrary, he wants to amplify the masculine strength within through the power of grace working in and through us. Sanctifying grace that works out our salvation in fear and trembling, and shapes and conforms us to the image of Christ. Didn’t Paul say we are saved by grace?
Think of how much damage we have done to the cause of Christ with our effiminate cliches of salvation never intended by Scripture! We will stand before Christ our Judge and account for that. It is said that roughly 90% of men in America believe in God, but only 30% or so actually go to church. The reason the 60% do not go to church is that they cannot connect with the blatant weakness, effiminacy, and other-worldliness of the church. Hence the charge of “hypocrites.” I can’t say that I blame them.
It has not always been this way. Judaism was a masculine religion. Early Christianity was a masculine religion, begun by a man with 12 male disciples. It remained thoroughly masculine until the late 19th century. Then men began falling away in droves.
If we want to be the triumphant church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to return to our heritage. We need to drop the ridiculous cliches and figures of speech that no longer communicate. We need to get over our fixation on going to heaven and do something creative and redemptive in the world we have now, while we have the time. We need to quit alienating solid, faithful men by our love-affair with the feminine.
Instead of sitting around weak and afraid, and waiting on the Lord to come and take us to heaven, let’s call on the name of the Lord for his salvation, the grace and strength added to ours to do mighty deeds in his glorious name. The church is the assembled army of God, ready for war. Be fruitful. Multiply. Subdue. Have dominion. Fill the earth with good things. This is the salvation of the Lord.
Saved from what indeed. The classic evangelical line, developed primarily in the last century, has us in imminent danger of hell fire and needing to be saved from that so we can go to heaven when we die. The entire concept revolves around the afterlife, where we will live in eternity in disembodied spirits, either in torment or in heavenly bliss.
I see the problem as three-fold, all of them offensive to our masculine identities.
First, we have come to the place where we speak in figures of speech supposedly well known in the church world but not well known to those we might hope to reach. Our cliches are like a foreign language, speaking in tongues if you will, to people who are non-religious. I make a point of NOT speaking in what my daughters call “church language.” Besides, these expressions tend to lose their meaning among believers too.
Second, the get-saved-to-go-to-heaven-when-you-die concept comes directly from Greek mythology, particularly gnosticism, where spirit is good and material evil. We will go away from this evil earth to a heavenly place, sing in heavenly choirs, and live in a mansion on a gold street. Pardon the cliche, but we are so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. The problem with this is that it offends the masculine destiny of making something of the earth now. It is totally foreign to Hebrew thought, the intentions of all who wrote the Bible. Jesus died on the cross to redeem the creation to himself, the creation that God pronounced good. The kingdom on earth is the process of redeeming the earth from the devil’s influence. The resurrection and life-after-death will occur on earth, as God intended from the beginning.
The third and most offensive to our masculinity is the aspect of being saved itself. As if we are totally powerless. Damsels in distress. Effiminate wimps. This too is totally foreign to Hebrew thought. To the writers of Scripture salvation means the lending of strength to get you out of a jam. It is a military idea referring to a predicament an army gets into from time to time, and the much-needed help from reinforcements that changes the equation and turns certain defeat into glorious victory.
Applying it to our spiritual lives salvation means we find ourselves away from God and unable to live for him. We may have self-defeating habits and behaviors we cannot change on our own. We call upon the name of the Lord and he delivers us by sending the reinforcements of his grace, the power to do what we cannot do for ourselves. You do not have to pray a “sinner’s prayer” (invented by 20th century evangelists, by the way) or confess all the bad things you have ever done. The Bible is clear. We call upon the name of the Lord. We look for his grace. We wrestle with the flesh within and crucify it.
God does not intend to emasculate us. On the contrary, he wants to amplify the masculine strength within through the power of grace working in and through us. Sanctifying grace that works out our salvation in fear and trembling, and shapes and conforms us to the image of Christ. Didn’t Paul say we are saved by grace?
Think of how much damage we have done to the cause of Christ with our effiminate cliches of salvation never intended by Scripture! We will stand before Christ our Judge and account for that. It is said that roughly 90% of men in America believe in God, but only 30% or so actually go to church. The reason the 60% do not go to church is that they cannot connect with the blatant weakness, effiminacy, and other-worldliness of the church. Hence the charge of “hypocrites.” I can’t say that I blame them.
It has not always been this way. Judaism was a masculine religion. Early Christianity was a masculine religion, begun by a man with 12 male disciples. It remained thoroughly masculine until the late 19th century. Then men began falling away in droves.
If we want to be the triumphant church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to return to our heritage. We need to drop the ridiculous cliches and figures of speech that no longer communicate. We need to get over our fixation on going to heaven and do something creative and redemptive in the world we have now, while we have the time. We need to quit alienating solid, faithful men by our love-affair with the feminine.
Instead of sitting around weak and afraid, and waiting on the Lord to come and take us to heaven, let’s call on the name of the Lord for his salvation, the grace and strength added to ours to do mighty deeds in his glorious name. The church is the assembled army of God, ready for war. Be fruitful. Multiply. Subdue. Have dominion. Fill the earth with good things. This is the salvation of the Lord.
Jesus Christ, the Pantokrator
Mark Twain wrote a series of satirical pieces which have collectively come to be called "Letters from the Earth".
ReplyDelete"In man's heaven everybody sings! The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth is able to do it there. The universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on, all day long, and every day, during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays; whereas in the earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is of one hymn alone. The words are always the same, in number they are only about a dozen, there is no rhyme, there is no poetry: "Hosannah, hosannah, hosannah, Lord God of Sabaoth, 'rah! 'rah! 'rah! siss! -- boom! ... a-a-ah!"
Seems as though Mr. Twain had a low view of heaven. I think many echo his sentiments. Mr. Twain's point is that heaven includes nothing that we enjoy here on Earth, and many things which people do not enjoy. He speaks rather disparagingly about the whole idea of heaven and hell. And I think he is not alone.
Most people don't want to spend eternity strumming harps and singing. Eternity to a finite human is a very long time. Shoot, many churchgoers start complaining after the third song on Sunday morning!
The sweet bye-and-bye doesn't look too sweet to many men, whether they be "saved" or not. It's time to change our imagery back to something Biblical.
One last thought: Where in the Bible does it say we will actually *go* to heaven? Didn't St. John write about God re-creating the Earth? Maybe the Jehovah's Witnesses have a grain of truth that we're missing?
Just a random thought.
Excellent article, Daddy. I like the icon!
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