The “Salvation Story” that so many of us were taught has some major issues. You don’t have to buy the alternative presented here, but it’s important to deal with the problems in the Evangelical version of the story. Left unchecked, any story central to a community that hinges on obedience can be used for authoritarian purposes.
In the Beginning
The story starts with God and humans walking together in communion. The two questions then are:
What separated us?
And how do we get back together?
The Mis-Named Tree
Some say the problem is disobedience. God told humans not to eat from a particular tree, but they did. They call it sin. This does happen in the Bible, but in the Bible story it is very clear the point is not about disobedience.
The tree had a name. It could have been the Tree of Disobedience or the Tree of Sin, but it wasn’t.
The Actual Problem
The tree was named the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The “fruit” of something is what comes out of it, like the “fruit of the Spirit.” Only, what comes out of this fruit is judgment. So that is how humans started looking at the universe… they started judging everything in it.
God Doesn’t Do That
In the disobedience story, after humans eat the fruit, God separates from humans. Humans had disobeyed/sinned, and God in that story can’t commune with sinful humans. It would tarnish God’s perfection and justness.
But that’s not how the story goes in the Bible.
God Doesn’t Run
In the Bible the humans’ eyes were opened. Once they started making judgments they judged God to be more good and themselves to be more evil. So they did what seemed reasonable and ran away.
God didn’t run. Humans did.
Life Is More Than This
The disobedience story delegitimizes most of our life experience because the only thing that matters in that story is obedience. Religious authorities say it’s obedience to God through the Bible, but in reality, it’s only what they say God says that counts.
Grappling with All of Life
In the Bible humans have to grapple with all of life.
Out of the curse of the fruit of knowing good and evil humans set gods, kings, and the rich up on high places as more good. The poor, the homeless, the foreign, and the “infirm” are treated as lower and more evil.
But God keeps trying to break through this curse.
Believe What They Say or Else?
In the disobedience story Jesus was perfectly obedient, and his death was a pure sacrifice that satisfied God’s need for perfect justice. So if humans will just believe this as religious authorities tell them, they can escape hell fire and reach God.
Salvation
But it’s the humans that have the problem, not God. Christ’s sacrifice doesn’t pay a ransom to God. God can just forgive. Christ pays the ransom to us and our judgment.
Christ’s death and resurrection bursts our judgmental universe and invites us to follow in creating a new one.
An Incomplete Gospel
It’s not that the old story is completely wrong. (Though it’s vision of “heaven” looks like the curse of the fruit of knowing good and evil going on forever.) But it’s right about Christ’s love for you. It’s right about your sins being forgiven. The story is just incomplete.
Unfortunately, authorities sometimes use that to get people to stop thinking and just be obedient.
Life!
For the full story the Bible calls us to love our neighbor. When God created humans God made them in God’s own image. In other words God created humans as God’s idol. If you want to walk with God again, you have to walk with the humans around you, love your neighbor, and love yourself.
So repent! …or more literally… Turn! Look! The kingdom of heaven is near you. It’s right there. It’s right here. Eternal life doesn’t start after we die. It is, by definition, eternal… aka NOW!