No Plan of Salvation

Sorry, but we don’t offer a neatly prepackaged “Plan of Salvation” for the members of our parish to use in evangelism.

We aren’t selling conversion. We are walking in divine justice and letting that speak for itself. If people ask about it, I can’t imagine how it would be exactly the same script you could follow in all contexts. No two people will be coming from quite the same kind of moral slavery, so the path to freedom has only some vague commonalities. Ultimate moral truth exceeds the capabilities of descriptive language; we end up searching for a parable that fits the need. We take for granted that our fallen human nature will surely get in the way, so we are reminded that the whole thing is one big miracle in the first place.

My whole gambit here as a virtual pastor is not telling you where the boundaries are, but telling you something about the process of setting boundaries. This is actually not religion per se, but meta-religion to be precise. I go to great lengths to warn you that all I can give you is what I have, so your inclusion in virtual parish membership is purely a matter of you humoring me. You know what you’ll get if you come here; you must also decide what and how much applies to you. I fully expect you to build your own religion, because religion is merely the individual human response to divine activity in the Spirit Realm. Religion is your effort to organize and implement a response to divine imperatives working in your heart. Religion must satisfy eternal demands; religion is the servant of faith, not the master. You have to remember that when someone asks about your religion.

So what would you tell someone who bluntly asks about your faith? All I can offer is what I have, so what follows depends entirely on how closely it comes to your own faith. Here are some of the fundamental concepts that come to mind:

• There has to be a driving sense of need for redemption. We probably aren’t often in a good position to assess whether it’s just that common bogus guilt and condemnation most people feel or whether there is a genuine eternal calling that surfaces in their souls. It helps if you are aware of the way Satan uses condemnation like a drug to keep people trapped. The miracle of personal redemption begins with a genuine sense of conviction, the birth of heart-led awareness intruding into the conscious mind. It doesn’t require a traumatic sense of torment with weeping and crying out, but it does require a sense of real need. Without that, there isn’t a lot that religion can do.
• There’s no hurry. We are at most midwives helping along a divine moral process. We didn’t create the sense of torment and we can’t give them any real relief. Dispossessing someone of demonic control requires their own moral volition or it won’t do any lasting good (Matthew 12:43-45). They have to fill that inner space with moral justice to prevent a worse end, so let this thing take its course.
• It’s all about the heart. The essence of our work here is helping people bring their conscious minds under the rule of their convictions. I use the word “convictions” to help bridge the cultural gap from a mythology that makes the heart something far less in our society. The heart is the one part of us designed to receive and process the truth from the Spirit Realm. The heart already knows and understands all of Eternity on its own terms, but it’s the conscious mind that needs to become aware of it. In this sense, “born again” is just a term for awakening the mind to the heart. If redemption happens, it is because the heart was already alive and knocking on the door of the conscious mind. We don’t awaken the heart. All we do is help someone find that link. All of us will spend the rest of our earthly existence trying to maximize the communication between the two.
• Religious teaching is just a way of expressing God’s divine character in context. We do spend a lot of time trying to make sense of how the Bible in general, and the various Covenants in particular, help to dramatize and breathe life into God as a Person and as Lord. These things are manifestations that give shape and character to what redemption does for us. It’s still a matter of walking back into Eden where we pass through that Flaming Sword of self-death. Those commandments and laws in the Bible are pointers to things that need to die so we can finish cutting off stuff that doesn’t belong in Eden. Need I remind you that the image of the Flaming Sword is a rather poor translation? It’s not about the fire, but the glow. The sword of truth glows with it’s own revelation; it burns only because the flesh resists the truth. That call to repentance is much bigger than the description of sins and how to repent.
• Obedience to God’s Law is its own reward. If your efforts to conform to your best understanding of what God demands don’t bring peace and joy, you are missing something somewhere. Creation is woven together from God’s character, so if conforming to His character doesn’t feel like conforming to reality, it’s not working. Chances are very good you have a broken concept for what it’s all about. We are seeking the thing for which we are designed, and God has revealed enough that we should be able to find it. We should hardly be surprised that we come into it with a lot of bad impulses and false understanding. Pleasing God should naturally be pleasing to us.

That should be enough to help you write your own Plan of Salvation.