One thing I've heard and agree with is that salvation starts now, not later. The new life starts now (even though it might not feel like it, sometimes as in my case, for a very long time!). That's why I can't say salvation is focused primarily on life after death.
Yes! I’ve said what I don’t think is the heart of salvation, but I guess I haven’t said what I think is the heart of salvation. To me, the heart of salvation is our transformation from who we are into who God intends us and wants us to be.
As someone who may recall, I’m fond of quoting Frederick Buechner, and he has this to say about salvation. A few bits from that longer quote that resonate with me and that seem relevant:
Salvation is an experience first and a doctrine second. . . .
A closer analogy is the experience of love. When you love somebody, it is no longer yourself who is the center of your own universe. It is the one you love who is. You forget yourself. You deny yourself. You give of yourself, so that by all the rules of arithmetical logic there should be less of yourself than there was to start with. Only by a curious paradox there is more. You feel that at last you really are yourself.
The experience of salvation involves the same paradox. Jesus put it like this: "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).
You give up your old self-seeking self for somebody you love and thereby become yourself at last. . . .
You do not love God and live for him so you will go to heaven. Whichever side of the grave you happen to be talking about, to love God and live for him is heaven. . . .
It is a process, not an event.
What happens to me after death is but part of the ongoing experience of salvation.
And I’d add that I think salvation has communal and even creation-wide aspects—the Kingdom of God, the new heaven and new earth. I’m leery of seeing salvation only through an individualistic lens.
Salvation may start now, yes, but the time on Earth, before we die, is literally infinitely shorter than the time after we die—however long the unbodied period in Heaven is, there’s infinite time in the New Heaven and the New Earth after that. “And all of their adventures on earth, and in Narnia, were the title and the cover page, and now the great story that never ends began…” (Quoted from memory, so likely imperfect.)
One thing I've heard and agree with is that salvation starts now, not later. The new life starts now (even though it might not feel like it, sometimes as in my case, for a very long time!). That's why I can't say salvation is focused primarily on life after death.
Yes! I’ve said what I don’t think is the heart of salvation, but I guess I haven’t said what I think is the heart of salvation. To me, the heart of salvation is our transformation from who we are into who God intends us and wants us to be.
As someone who may recall, I’m fond of quoting Frederick Buechner, and he has this to say about salvation. A few bits from that longer quote that resonate with me and that seem relevant:
Salvation is an experience first and a doctrine second. . . .
A closer analogy is the experience of love. When you love somebody, it is no longer yourself who is the center of your own universe. It is the one you love who is. You forget yourself. You deny yourself. You give of yourself, so that by all the rules of arithmetical logic there should be less of yourself than there was to start with. Only by a curious paradox there is more. You feel that at last you really are yourself.
The experience of salvation involves the same paradox. Jesus put it like this: "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).
You give up your old self-seeking self for somebody you love and thereby become yourself at last. . . .
You do not love God and live for him so you will go to heaven. Whichever side of the grave you happen to be talking about, to love God and live for him is heaven. . . .
It is a process, not an event.
What happens to me after death is but part of the ongoing experience of salvation.
And I’d add that I think salvation has communal and even creation-wide aspects—the Kingdom of God, the new heaven and new earth. I’m leery of seeing salvation only through an individualistic lens.
If praying that the Kingdom of God should be "on earth as it is in heaven" doesn't have a here and now communal meaning, then it has no meaning at all.
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As someone who may recall, I’m fond of quoting Frederick Buechner, and he has this to say about salvation. A few bits from that longer quote that resonate with me and that seem relevant: What happens to me after death is but part of the ongoing experience of salvation.
And I’d add that I think salvation has communal and even creation-wide aspects—the Kingdom of God, the new heaven and new earth. I’m leery of seeing salvation only through an individualistic lens.
If praying that the Kingdom of God should be "on earth as it is in heaven" doesn't have a here and now communal meaning, then it has no meaning at all.