My chains are gone,
I've been set free;
My savior god,
Has ransomed me.
I'm not sure why, but those words from a bastardized version of Amazing Grace were reverberating through my head tonight. As they repeated over and over, I wondered what those words really meant. Where is the meaning? How are those words defined?
Well funny enough this tied in with a theme in my head as I was sweeping my driveway out this afternoon. The theme was universal salvation, hell, and eternal torture. I am more and more amazed with how easily I accepted the thought of heaven and hell when I was younger, but yet also accepted Jesus as this all loving soul who accepted everyone, passing judgment on no one (unless you count the brood of vipers comment), while at the same time wincing every time that someone tried making god seem like the same loving person while I read of the genocides and general angry jealous wrath poured out on his and other people for the smallest things (or even nothing at all).
Then you call god father and we his children. Think about the relationship of a father and a child. The child will do things that thoroughly piss the father off. But does a father of sound mind, full of love and compassion, of grace and mercy, ever torture the child? Do they ever punish the child indefinitely just because the child didn't obey the father? Isn't there a lesson and reconciliation as the goal of any correction? The word correction itself denotes that you are trying to steer something toward the right way or goal for that object.
If we believe all of that then why would we believe in eternal punishment? What is so sensational about the idea that we everyone will eventually be saved through corrections over time?
I can tell you it took near 500 years for the sensational idea of eternal punishment to become an accepted idea. With the help of people like Tertullian, who claimed that the greatest thing about heaven would be the vantage point of which to see the souls of the sinners being tormented in hell, Augustine, who came up with the idea of Original Sin and a Just War, and Calvin, who's influence and direct commands damned so many people to burn at the stake that it would make a pagan blush at such an excess human sacrifices, it was inevitable.
Yet the idea of universal salvation did not die. It has been regaining it's strength for over 300 years now, and it shows no sign of stopping. Thankfully we had the support of earlier church fathers to point to such as Gregory of Nyssa, who helped posit the trinity and an eternal god theology, Clement of Alexandria, who wrote that the punishments of God are "saving and disciplinary, leading to conversion.", and most of all Origen, who imagined even demons one day being reunited with god.
I think universal salvation is important, even to those who don't believe in the Christian creeds, etc., because it is a good first step towards breaking away from childish doctrines like anger, spite, and revenge. It is only a first step though.
We have yet to figure out what salvation truly means. What do we need saved from? I would say that we need not look in to any deeper meaning than the first obvious ones. We need saved from our immaturity, from our need to hurt others in order to get our way, from our need to control anything and everything, from our nature of justification. But most of all we need saved from our own self induced chains of guilt, rules, and uncertainty in our actions, due to what we think are higher rules that come from a god whom we have yet to define on our own. In other words, I think the greatest threat to our freedom are our own imaginations and lack of true knowledge.
If you haven't noticed by now, I have left god with the smaller "g". This is intentional. Though I come from a solid Baptist background, I believe that this message is a message for a greater reach, beyond faiths and denominations. I would not dare to presume that anyone would ascribed to my faith in order to be saved from themselves. This message would be contrary to such a thought. Any faith that says it is the only way is either lying or has been corrupted through the ages enough to have placed words in the original teachers or disciples mouths to have them say anything.
So one thing you have to decide is what would it mean to be free. The word freedom calls to mind several ideas; a lack of external control on your actions, thoughts, and ideas; an ability to extend beyond what you are told, to learn new things and form new insights; the ability to roam wherever you would like without road blocks, rules of prohibition, or an authority to check with first. Those are the ideas that spring to my mind first. All of these apply eternally: as long as I have a mind to reason. I recommend you write down what freedom first means to you.
Now that we have a list we need to compare our religion and doctrines against it. My faith teaches me that I was made in the image of god: that all my qualities are the qualities of god. If that is true then reason is of god and should be considered completely applicable to this kind of search for truth. Therefore I can question the nature of god, but first I need to question the nature of Jesus. I am trying to follow Jesus as a Christian right? So my greatest priority is to compare Jesus' words and actions against god's words and actions. Do they teach different things? Or are Jesus' teachings a simple extension of god's? If I find conflicts and I apply reasoning to them to figure out the end results of each, would I be able to rectify the conflicts and repair the relationships?
My searching has told me that Jesus and god are not even close to the same people. There are many things I have learned on the way in fact. After testing the nature of those first entities, I've gone on to test more of the Bible. I've found that Paul is simply a preacher, and so I should treat his letters as sermons. That means that I do not have to treat them as the final word. I can weight them as well against the same test as before. You can continue to do that all down the chain. Eventually you will find that the Bible is not what we were raised to believe it was. This is simply comparing the doctrines we were raised with against the actual words in the book itself. I haven't mentioned even studying the validity of those words. That should be done, but it bears little importance if you find the conflicts first in the actual book ad doctrines taught from it.
You can apply these types of searches to any doctrines from any faiths or religions. This type of methodology helps keep scientist and engineers (of which I am a software engineer) on the right path. They need to be done.
Now these conflicts, wrong doctrine, etc., do not invalidate our need for spiritual salvation necessarily. But now, if you discount some doctrine about heaven, hell, or some true god, you end up seeing salvation as a very human thing. Now it is a matter of your spirit in a very real and non-eternal fashion. You have just stepped in to the realm of humanism. You needn't be ashamed. Jesus came to save the human condition; he met the human needs of stress relief, medical healing, grief from loss, how to be generous, and how to live a balance life with yourself and others. In short how a human should live here on Earth and how they should treat other humans. Many others have done the same.
Early Christians took Jesus' words to heart and sold all that they had in order to serve the human needs arising from the poor, death, war, and oppression. Jesus was a rebel against oppression of any sorts; his way of subverting that oppression was through ignorance, not of the deeds of oppression done, but of the vengeful ways. He sought to remove his enemies, one by one, through unasked for gentleness, love, and true friendship. His followers took up his banner after he was gone, at least for a little while.
Then there are other followers who took up Jesus' banner as well. Islam is a faith that venerates the ways and teachings of Jesus, and demands that they be first principles of which you cannot consider yourself a Muslim without them. That they claim Muhammad as a prophet in kind with Jesus makes very little difference to that banner. Many Muslims abhor the actions of oppression just as we Christians should.
Then there are others such as followers of Buddha and Ghandi, who strive to peacefully bring about proper human relationships. Some have succeeded greatly where others have failed but lived truthfully at least. I think of Ghandi's influence on Martin Luther King Jr., who having fully understood Ghandi, turned from the idea of just war, and towards the principles of non-violence and love towards all. He both tragically died for those principles, and succeeded in forming a movement big enough to help push through the conscious the idea of equal right ' s of all men.
And like some of the generational followers of other teachers, some of Martin Luther King Jr.' followers eventually limited his teachings. They sought to make equal rights to mean to place them above others in order to equalize rights eventually.
Such corruptions of core ideals can be found everywhere. That is why it's important to have these questions asked, answered, and applied, personally.
The finality and perfection of all right religions point towards the human condition; and what it takes to save it. It is not knowledge only that save, but the application, or deeds, that spring from that knowledge.
So, my chains are gone, I've freed myself of dogmas and doctrines, I've been set free. My saviour god, my own searching and applying the knowledge I have found towards living as god intended with all man, has ransomed me. This is the summary of this message.
