First of all, how can someone define a certain point of time in their existence where they were suddenly saved from eternal damnation and were guaranteed a spot in Heaven with God. Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of living the rest of your life? If you have been saved, lets say at 2:00pm Thursday the 19th of June 2005, and your sure that you have been promised this eternal life of bliss, then where is the struggle. Would this not cancel out any possibilities of you ending up somewhere other than heaven, and in the process cancel out the need for you to try being Christ-like any more? What's keeping a Christian motivated to be Christian when they're convinced that there is nothing they can do to get them out of Heaven, because they're saved.
The second issue I have with this, is that the idea of being "Saved" only leads to a judgmental attitude. A Christian who believes themselves to be saved will judge others, based on a certain set of criteria, to be saved or not. "Have you offered your life to Christ yet?", and if the reply is no, then you are certainly not saved and are going to burn in hell, unless the words are uttered and fast! Well, who do we think we are to judge others in the place of God? What point in time was it that we got the bright idea that we could decide exactly what it takes for another to get into heaven? It seems to me like a lot of people are missing the point, and should most likely reexamine themselves before being so willing to make these finger pointing statements towards others. So tell me, does this whole saved issue really mean that the Good Samaritan is going to burn in hell for not repeating a certain set of words?
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2 comments:
I've often thought of the story of the Good Samaritan and basically all of Jesus' parables of people who "got it". The prodigal son, etc. These people weren't "Christian".
Something we could do is research the parables of Jesus and discuss the possible implications to our current idea of "salvation"...ie. are only Christians "saved"? What does "salvation" really mean? Is that blasphemy? I'm not saying we should doubt our own salvation, but maybe we should challenge our religious idea of it.
http://www.bibletexts.com/texts/parables.htm
...could be fun.
I think this is a very important issue that needs to be discussed to no end... I agree that it would be fun and it's also a necessity. It seems to me that too many of us slip into this comfortable laziness, secure in our understanding that we are "in" and forget that the struggle is life long, every minute of every day
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