Everyone should be saved

Getting a college degree is a notable achievement and enlightening to the curious mind. Graduate school is a very different kind of a game. I made a good choice when I applied to Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University. I studied under world-class scholars and developed research skills. Graduate school for me was a four-year exercise of listening, reading, researching, writing and discussing. In the process, I gained confidence in the conclusions I reached.

After graduate school, I began my career as a pastor. Being a pastor is a great and challenging profession. I very quickly found myself dealing with life situations that were not anticipated in graduate school. In graduate school I had developed the practice that served me well. When I ran into things that were beyond me, I took the time to do research and write a paper. I have written a lot of papers of little interest to the world but very important to me as I struggled to do my work as a pastor.

Garrett was a Methodist seminary. I was an American Baptist. What does it mean to be “saved?” The two traditions give different answers. I started the research process looking for an understanding of my own with which I could live and work. In my educational journey, I put in a lot of time studying Greek, the language in which most of the New Testament was originally written. I did a significant word study that started from English to Greek and then to Hebrew. (Yes, I studied a little Hebrew also. I was not very good with it, but I had enough knowledge to be helpful.)

I concluded that being saved and finding salvation was not about escaping Hell and landing in Heaven. Rather, being saved was about becoming a whole person right here on this planet that we call earth. As I pushed my thinking and understanding, I was compelled to decide that in the Christian Faith, there is no such thing as “individual” salvation. I came to this conclusion in the midst of the heyday of Billy Graham, who was inviting people to “come forward” and receive individual salvation. I was clearly out of step.

The papers that I researched and wrote were seldom published and seldom shared, except that they impacted the sermons that I preached each Sunday. I typically threw them away with a new confidence in playing out my role as pastor of everyday people in a congregation of worshipping seekers.

But if being saved is not about heaven and hell, what is it about? If salvation is about becoming whole, what does that involve? Just like there are no two people who are exactly alike, there is not just one form of salvation. The apostle Paul used the human body as a picture of what it means to be whole and complete. According to Paul, each part of the human body is distinct and has a peculiar function. In order to be fully functional, the various parts of the body need each other. When each part of the body is fully functional the whole body is then what it ought to be. Individual parts are dead and useless if separated from the operation of the entire body.

In a recent edition of Sojourners magazine, Daniel Mendoza tells the story of a girl, who had been held in isolation by her parents with virtually no outside contact with other human beings. In the process the girl had been denied the ability to learn to walk or talk. After being discovered, the girl was never able to establish these abilities. The title of the article is “Solitary Torture.” Mendoza’s point was to expose the use of solitary confinement or isolation in our nation’s prisons. Thousands of youth are currently being held in solitary confinement. Human beings were not meant for isolation. Isolation denies participation and opportunity to be saved.

In contrast to Mendoza’s article about the torture of isolation, other materials that I have recently read tell the stories of what happens to people when they are given the opportunity to become a part of community. Crime rates go down, medical costs drop drastically, alcohol and drug abuse diminishes, obesity is reduced, and quality of life advances.

Isolation and community are not the only issues in a person becoming whole. However, taking away the first (isolation) and encouraging the second (community) are core concerns.

Everyone needs to be saved. Do your homework. What makes people whole? True evangelism is community building. In communities, a lot of people are saved.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net. This column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman or its parent company, Wick Communications.