My background is rooted in Jesus needing to be my ‘personal Saviour’, but over the years I have come to believe that we have obliterated the bigger picture by insisting on this aspect being central and the entirety of the offer of hope. Scripture is full of encounters with God at a personal level, and the author who shaped so much of the NT (Saul / Paul) testifies to the shift in his understanding that took place through a personal encounter where the person spoke to him audibly in his own language. He expected that there would be something similar for others who became part of that early Jesus-movement. In one of his dense passages he says how can they believe unless they have personally heard Jesus (Ro. 10:14 translating it as per the convention that the verb to hear takes the ‘genitive’ case when it is personal – hence not to hear ‘about’ but to ‘hear Jesus’).
Personal encounters. Ever so present in Scripture. Questions such as ‘was Paul saved before his encounter on the road to Damascus?’ are at one level not for us to answer, but the NT is clear that the ‘salvation’ that comes through the cross was first for Jews and it was to a Jewish audience that the words ‘there is salvation in no other name’ were addressed. I think part of the confusion arises as ‘salvation’ has been reduced to ‘safe as I have my free pass to heaven’.
Salvation is essentially about a corporate experience resulting in a purpose.
We see that in the Israel story. A people chosen so that the whole of humanity can be redeemed, with redemption carrying the weight of delivered from slavery. This is why at the heart of ekklesia is that of movement – a movement carrying the conviction that it is part of something wider but with the desire / mandate to see the wider context changed through embracing the values, beliefs and practices of the movement. MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ is such a summary statement of the heart of a movement. Or in some of the most challenging words in Revelation after all John saw we read that he saw a new heaven and a new earth.
Personal encounters are present, but the wider context must not be lost. Paul’s message was not understood as a private call to acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and then to express it in a privatised religious setting; it was understood as a universal claim that the crucified Jew was none other than Lord and Saviour and thus a challenge to all other rival powers, and very specifically to the one whose empire promised peace, security and prosperity.
Into that comes the personal encounter of being delivered from the powers of this age to being transferred into the realm of Jesus’ rule over all hostile powers.
The marginalisation of all other powers… imagine if that marginalisation became ever more visible and real… the kingdoms (realms of rule) of this world would indeed ‘become’ the kingdom of our Lord and God. A world shaped by those rulers becoming a world shaped by the cross. That is transformation.
The western world is cracking; the hegemony is being weakened; the façades are no longer able to hide what is being exposed – for those who have eyes to see. There is of course a strong ‘we have to get back’ to where we were – whether expressed politically (MAGA and the like) or through a historical lens of how Christian faith has shaped the West… but there is always another path that beckons, one that says you have not been this way before, a vision shaped by the future… another ‘I have a dream’ scenario.
Yes the challenges are enormous, but I do not believe that to ‘offer the ticket to a better destination’ at a personal level is either sufficient for the moment nor in line with a NT vision. My paradigm has shifted; deeply grateful for every personal encounter that says the Gospel is not simply about a set of beliefs of values; but also grateful that we have hope for this life and this world.
The MAGA language is about being freed from slavery. It looks to remind people of the freedom they can have as opposed to the cult of utilitarianism which in itself is an ideal and has been captured and then enslaved us to various ideologies as if they are true.
I think we are going to come into a period of freedom and a realization that we have been enslaved and we did not know it.
Thanks David… I think beyond the ‘freedom’ message is of the freedom coming from the ‘future’ – so when viewing it from a faith position it is imaging what has not been? ‘I do a new thing’, with reminders of the past, then forget the former thing. A ‘prophetic imagination’ as per Brueggemann. I get quite concerned when I read of the hope for days that were former – a longing for a return to Christendom in some way or other – and I am certainly NOT suggesting that is what you are looking for – the enslavement to a whole host of ideologies is right there as you wrote.