Redemption
What
does it mean when Christians say that we are saved, redeemed, by Jesus Christ? Isn’t
Jesus just a great non-violent teacher, like Ghandi? The very concept of
salvation bothers many people. It bothers some people because they have been too-often
made uncomfortable by in-your-face fundamentalist conversion attempts. It
offends others because they feel just fine, damn it. They don’t want to be
saved and are quite certain they don’t need it. In fact the very implication
offends their sense of human self- determination and autonomy. They see it as
“disempowering” and downright insulting. Still others are disturbed by the
implication that Christ had to die to placate a raging God. What kind of “god”
would be so insane? Yet again, others still are unhappy at their perception
that this message suggests that we are to be focused on life-after-death, at
the expense of living well in this life.
If
one soldier steps in front of another to take a bullet, the soldier whose life
was saved will not complain about emasculation. He may instead fall on his
knees in tears of gratitude and grief. The Apostles first realized that Jesus
would die for them on the night he was arrested, when he said to the soldiers
and temple guards, “I am the one you want; let these others go.” Gradually it
dawned on them that he died for them not just in that literal, immediate sense,
but in a much much larger way for them and for all. He took the bullet for
everyone. “He died for all.” “by his stripes, you were healed.”
But
sometimes we don’t appreciate this because we don’t see the bullets, we don’t
see the prison walls, we don’t realize we are trapped and need to be freed.
What are these bullets, what are these prison walls? They are four, like the
walls of a cell, like the four winds, like the four horseman of the apocalypse.
To each, Christians claim there is an answer in Christ, and thus one facet of
his saving action.
The
first is psychological: we are trapped by addictions, inner demons; sometimes
we are all to aware of these traps, other times we are tragically blind—our pride,
jealousy, anger, or indifference cause others to suffer but we do not think we
are the cause. Sometimes we are infected by anger; other times by sadness. Some
are addicted to pride and self-importance; others oppressed by a sense of
worthlessness. Some are afflicted by envy, or jealousy; some by obsessions.
Others, by greed, so that they cannot be happy or secure unless they have more
money and more things. Still others, by lust for food or sex, so they cannot be
content without the best food or best sex. Some are addicted to pleasing
others; some cannot rest without the esteem of others. Still others are
infected by ideologies, which blind them and cause them to do things that tear
down society because they think they are doing something good, when in reality
it is evil. Thus the inner compulsions, addictions, attachments, and
preoccupations that make us less than what we were meant to be, that cause us
to be stuck in the past or anxious about the future, to be incapable of
interior freedom or peace, that require us to act for our own security rather
than in love, hold us back. Many of us can identify having grappled with many
of these “demons.” So although we sometimes may think we are free, upon
reflection we see that we often, even always, are not really free at all. How
can we be free? Perhaps with great effort and discipline, perhaps with
meditation or Buddhism, some can find their way free of many such compulsions.
Yet without due care, we are soon addicted all over again, dependent on
meditation or diet or careful practice for their inner peace. Christ frees us
from these demons, and in his death and resurrection, He provides the power, in
his living spirit, to break these bonds. His spirit makes possible an interior transformation,
breaking the bonds of interior oppression, compulsion, addiction, anger,
hatred, the inner karma of our own sin and participation in sin, the fear of
death that makes us compromise, and in breaking these bonds it brings instead
interior peace, freedom, compassion, solidarity, the capacity to really love.
This personal transformation may ultimately be in the service of bringing the
kingdom, and may happen in the context of community, but the individual is
nevertheless saved too as an end in
itself (the Gospel stories invariably show a single individual being
healed—symbolizing many, but yet one individual person). He became human, that
we may become God.[1]
This kind of salvation is realized by the “personal encounter” with Christ and
with the church and is sustained through prayer, fasting (renunciation of
worldly desires to make room for practice of the virtues and the growth of a
“greater love”), and almsgiving (practice of virtue), as Jesus taught. According
to Ron Suskind in his book “Confidence Men,” the boys on Wall Street say that
everyone has a “handle” –something they need or want or fear, that you can use
to turn them to your own goals. This is how they get their way in business,
with lobbying Congress, etc. Christian faith at its best frees us from having
any “handle.” We serve only God.
The
second wall of the prison in which we are trapped is collective moral evil or
sin. We stood condemned, because our entire existence is mired in
sin—collective and individual. It is inescapable. Upon reflect, our impression
that we may be morally innocent or righteous soon crumbles. We think at first
that we have not sinned, but then we look more closely and see that we are in
fact implicated, we are culpable. I reflect and learn and then I realize with
dismay, that there is blood on my t-shirt sewn in a sweat shop, on my tomatoes
harvested by wage-theft labor, on the gas pump handle guaranteed by military
conflicts and death; on the very land I walk upon, where genocide made it
possible for me and my family and friends to thrive here. There is blood on the
money I earn, for the wealth of my nation—of most nations--grew by slave labor
or by other kinds of serious oppression of peoples who stood in the way of
history. There is in fact blood and condemnation everywhere, so pervasive that
we never think about it, we go crazy if we think about it. I have seen people try
to think about it and then shake their head as if beset by a swarm of bees, and
say aloud, “I can’t think about that.” This is the demon at our door, from
which we cannot escape. In the moral law written in our own soul, we stand
condemned. We need salvation because we are all implicated, whether we like it
or not. Walter Wink (quoted by Rynne), reflects on Paul’s description of
forgiveness in Colossians. Paul writes, “And even when you were dead in transgressions...he
brought you to life...having forgiven all our transgressions; obliterating the
bond against us...”. Wink states: “The Christus Victor or social theory of the
atonement…states that what Christ has overcome is precisely the Powers[2]
themselves. The forgiveness of which Col 2:13-14 speaks is forgiveness for
complicity in our own oppression and that of others. Our alienation is not
solely the result of rebellion against God. It is also the result of our being
socialized by alienating rules and requirements….Before we reach the age of
choice, our choices have already been chosen for us by a system indifferent to
our uniqueness.” Thus Christ saves us from both our own oppression and that of
others; both our own alienation and the alienation that is created by the
social structure.
He took this condemnation on himself, as God—thus, God in Christ does not condemn, but joins and intercedes. The judgment we cannot evade is, as I see it, the moral law—a universal in human history. We cannot withstand it, except in Christ. In so doing we are invited to join together to break these collective bonds of social sin. To break the bonds of oppression, greed, and violence, the karma of social sin, moving toward a kingdom of justice and a way of life that is powered by nonviolence. William Stringfellow[3] emphasized liberation from the way of death. In so doing, he reclaimed an ancient Biblical language of “principalities and powers.” These were often understood in terms of spiritual beings. But Stringfellow concludes that they refer to earthly transpersonal powers, such as governments, institutions, religions, and other social structures, but also ideologies, that by their nature are prioritized on their own survival and sacrifice the individuals within themselves in order to ensure their own success. Thus, he concludes that these transpersonal social structures exercise the power of death—through oppression, exploitation, dehumanization, and violence. This power is broken by Jesus. This kind of salvation is demonstrated in Jesus’ life[4] and can be realized in the community that follows him, through their freedom from fear, freedom to love, freedom to resist the powers of death all around.
There
is a third wall to the prison, however: history itself. Why is history a prison
wall? I see it that we have often thought of history as a story of progress.
Thus, we could imagine that redemption would come in history itself—in progress,
in the eventual resolution of our predicaments by events or future
accomplishment. We looked for support at signs of true progress: the evolution
and growth of human thought, the growth of ideals of human rights and
democracy, the progress of science, technology, medicine, literature, and
music. And thus we took our hope and our consolation from the progress of
history. But a closer examination of history raises a very serious problem: the
problem of the price that has been paid for that mythical “progress.” Let me
consider just a few examples. When the Europeans reached the new world, they
brought disease and guns that decimated entire cultures and lead directly to
the death of some 90% of the indigenous population[5],
which some have termed a genocide. Some of these deaths were horrible, the
product of rape, torture, and pillage; others were diseases. The story of the
African slave trade is similarly horrific;[6]
for a thousand years Africans were exported as slaves to Muslim countries, and
for almost 400 years to European countries and the Americas, with estimates of
12 million or more captured and sold into slavery, decimating entire
civilizations[7].
The human misery encompassed in those numbers is untold and impossible to
imagine or grasp. That human moral awareness ended the trade is of little
consolation to the millions whose families were gone forever to horror. In the
late 1970’s, in Cambodia, the dictator Pol Pot supervised the killing of over 1
million people, some 25% of the population of Cambodia, a slaughter again
impossible to grasp. The atrocities of the Nazi regime in the 1930’s and 1940’s
are well known yet, if reflected upon, difficult to truly grasp in their
magnitude. Stalin, as rule of the Soviet Union, carried out purges,
deportations, and mass killings that are estimated to have resulted in over 20
million dead, not counting those who died in World War II.[8] In
1945 our own nation dropped atomic bombs on civilian population centers, with
unthinkable horror. The contemporary atrocities of Bosnia, Sudan, do not
require recounting but they do require reflection. What is more, such massive suffering,
sorrow, and loss seem to characterize much of human history; it is not just a
modern feature.
In
the face of the scale of this suffering and sorrow, it is very difficult to
conclude that somehow future historical progress could possibly be worth this
price. To my mind, in the end, we can only conclude that the numbers don’t work—the
cost of history cannot possibly justify any progress that might ensure. Even if
history should somehow arrive at ten thousand years of universal utopia, I
could not conclude that the entire operation was “worth it.” Therefore, I
conclude that a clear eyed look at history produces not hope, but rather
despair. No redemption is possible within history’s progress. Furthermore, we
now see that human history brings with it the destruction of the very creation
by which God was first revealed. We are extinguishing species, we are wrecking
the biosphere. These things may never be undone. History is not a story of
progress, but a story of a price too high. The cost can never be “worth it” in
human terms. Here we are trapped, trapped in denial and despair, forced to
ignore, to not feel, to lie, and to pretend it is not that bad. Here redemption takes on a mystical, cosmic
component: redemption of hell and of history and of all that has been lost.
This part is described well by Leonardo Boff[9]
and is achieved by Christ’s death and resurrection and by his “end time” return
(an inadequate metaphor that conveys the reach outside and beyond time and
across all of time). Teilhard[10]
alludes to this as well. So does Saint Paul, when he writes in the 8th
Chapter of Romans “the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery
to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of
childbirth together until now.” Thus, Christ’s action is within
history but is not *confined* to history. This component is therefore
part of the definition of specifically Christian hope, which dares to encompass
not only the present and the future but also the past, not only human loss but
creation’s losses, and to envision all of it touched by a Mystery, a mystery of
redemption that is real and beyond time. Without this kind of hope, it is
unclear that Christianity offers a hope much different than the social transformers,
revolutionaries, and Marxists—visions that are inadequate in the face of the cost
of history. Thus, for me, Christianity does not worship the idol of progress
in history, but rather worships a God who acts in history, to reveal hope,
through human agency and vision, against the powers of evil that also act in
history, but that God’s action also transcends history in some mysterious but
important way that faith discloses.
The
final wall of the prison is our own current powerlessness, in the face of our
own suffering. Here salvation means ongoing
effect. By this I mean the real availability of the Holy Spirit—as power of
transformation, healing, and liberation in time. How is this done? Through
Christ’s living presence in the world, the Holy Spirit, encountered in the
community, in solidarity, and in prayer. How is Christ present now? (a) In the
community of believers, who become Christ to one another. (b) In prayer, where
we encounter by opening our heart. (c) In our lives, where we experience
transformation and healing. (d) in society, where we see movement toward
justice and toward peace. Most ironically, yet pointedly, He is encountered in
our inescapable suffering, for it is precisely there that he as God has gone to
meet us: thus salvation comes in the form of God’s connection to suffering and
transformation of the experience of suffering. This is also part of living in
solidarity, as mentioned earlier. Here I do not mean that suffering is
inherently good and certainly do not mean it should be accepted if we can
escape it. Jesus himself prayed to be spared the cross if possible, but for
reasons of moral demand (as in Jesus’ case) or for reasons of historical cause,
much suffering cannot be escaped. Yet it is going too far, therefore, to argue
that as in liberation theology[11] that
the only Christian suffering is suffering in the struggle for justice. Much
suffering for justice is not Christian, and much of the suffering in the world
does not have the consolation of being for any just cause. Much human suffering
is simply crushing and meaningless, is a combination of broken integrity and
physical sorrow, or is sheer loss. Much of it is imbued with despair.
The
ancient idea is therefore fruitful that our suffering can be mystically joined
to Christ’s suffering, that we can participate in the redemptive aspect of his
suffering, taking on to ourselves (if only in prayer) the suffering of the
world and joining to the suffering of others in solidarity when we must suffer,
even when we are not directly suffering
as a result of the struggle for justice: this is a powerful, transformative
vision and one that enables great strength, courage, and endurance, whether one
is suffering for justice or suffering in a seemingly more meaningless, hidden
way. We cannot overlook this or else we overlook Jesus’ healing ministry
and we are unable to reach with the Gospel those who feel broken and unable
to do more.
Putting
these four facets of salvation together (interior imprisonment and its
transformation; moral and social evil and its liberation; historical futility
and the loss of creation and its restoration; lived powerlessness and suffering
and Christ’s ongoing effect in joining us there), we see that salvation and
redemption come not just from Jesus’ life, not just from his death, not just
from his resurrection, but from the integrated whole of his life, death, and
resurrection. In his life he exemplified how we are to live and revealed a God who
is not distant or punishing, but the fountainhead of Love who is near and
healing. By being incarnate God, he became God taking on our suffering and our
sin (structural and personal) and gave himself (God’s self donation to us) in order
to save us, to free us. Creator became Creature; a mystery that can be plumbed
endlessly, and revealed a God who stands in for us and dies to save us from our
own prison walls. Clearly in today’s understanding we can dismiss the idea that
this was a death demanded by God as payment for some sacrificial concept of
justice. Yet at the same time, it was a death that was a sacrifice, and a
powerful one, because God took on our life and death. By his death, he became God
in solidarity with the totality of human suffering as well as the consequence
of nonviolent resistance. By his resurrection, he showed the power of his
spirit, God’s eternal renewal, and the cosmic and mystical power of his
salvation, and he broke the Power of Death both symbolically and actually.
So
he interceded. He stood in our place. He took the bullet. In so doing he shows
us intercession as the fundamental revelation of God. The fundamental nature of
God is to intercede on our behalf—morally, spiritually, and in every respect.
God is for us. This is the fundamental revelation.
We
remember not only cross but also life, but not only life and cross, but also
Resurrection.
But
also—it is not just in the past. Christ is alive now and available for a relationship
with you and me. This is the fundamental Christian faith and message. This is
the scandal and the opportunity. Dare we believe it? Dare we examine our moral
predicament? Dare we examine our lost dreams and hopes? Or must we cling to our
narrative, which reassures us that we are not implicated. Dare we believe,
engage, open our heart, to Him—to this Spirit—and let our heart be transformed?
Will
it happen all at once? Will thunderclaps go off? Once in a while they have, in
history, but most of the time it’s as gradual and inexorable as the coming in
of the tide, as the changing of the season from winter to spring. We don’t
notice it until we look back.
Prayer
is opening the heart to Christ, letting him in. When we do this—stuff happens
differently. When we open our eyes, we see that we in fact are under a hail of
bullets. We need intercession, we need saving, we need redemption. When we let
redemption happen, or rather when we engage in the Reality that it is already
available, we encounter and discover a new way of being human.
So
Jesus saves us not merely by revealing who God is and how we can live. He also
saved us by mysteriously breaking the power of death and evil, freeing us from
moral condemnation, and freeing us from our own demons, providing a spiritual
power that can be encountered and take us on a journey of transformation that
is backed by a profound hope, a hope that encompasses and transcends our life
and history.
[1] This “deification” or “divinization”
theory is well known. “God became a man, that all people may become Gods” to
paraphrase Saint Irenaus “[T]he Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did,
through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be
even what He is Himself” in his Against Heresies. This
is completely scriptural. St Paul, in second Corinthians, writes "we all,
with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into
the same image from one degree of glory to another”.
[2] By “Powers” Wink means, along with
Stringfellow (below), earthly institutions that are transpersonal in nature, such
as nation states, corporations, and social structures (including religions).
[3] For a terrific introduction see Essential writings of William Stringfellow,
edited by Bill Wylie-Kellerman.
[4] The “exemplary” theory of salvation,
in theological terms. This is often mistakenly reduced to a simple Gospel of
nonviolence. However a mere exemplary theory is not quite enough, because the
same can be said of Ghandi or King, that is, we have many other examples so
Jesus is not merely an example. In
the “nonviolent Gospel theory” or “liberation from violence” (see Terrence Rynne, Ghandi & Jesus: The saving power of
nonviolence), the comparison to Ghandi can be overdrawn. On the one hand,
it is fundamental that the Gospel requires nonviolence. On the other hand,
Jesus was not like Ghandi—he did not target specific political objectives
(drive the British from India) nor undertake organized, political actions (the
salt march). He did challenge the entrenched powers (and they killed him for
it). But his activity was focused on healing and on symbolism. Ghandi did not
walk about healing the sick, casting out demons, and preaching the kingdom of
God. Ghandi and Jesus overlap in their use of symbolic nonviolent action, but
Ghandi adds a theory of nonviolent direct action that Jesus does not use; Jesus
adds the kingdom of God, that Ghandi does not talk about. And no one believes
that Ghandi’s death has brought them salvation. More concretely, Stringfellow
talks about spiritual liberation from the power of death, as it is evidenced in
structural powers in society. This is distinct, it seems, from a simple theory
of nonviolent change. Thus, the liberation from death a helpful metaphor,
because healing, raising, preaching, and nonviolence are all encompassed here
along with the transformation and leavening of society.
[5] It is beyond my
expertise to gauge the population loss in the new world but all sources seem to
agree it was catastrophic; documentation is ample as in: M. Livi-Bacci, (2012).
A concise history of world populations (5th
edition). English translation, John Wiley & Sons, publishers. N.D.
Cook, (1998). Born to Die: Disease and
New World Conquest, Cambridge University Press; J Diamond, (1997). Guns, Germs, & Steel; McKay, Hill, &
Buckler, (1992). A History of World
Societies. Houghton Mifflin; T. Russell (1990). American Indian holocaust and
survival: a population history since 1492. University of
Oklahoma Press.
[6] See Livi-Bacci, prior footnote
[7] Again, I do not claim to be authoritative
on the precise scale of the trade, but all information concurs it was horrific;
additional background is readily available; e.g. J.A. Rawley, (2005), The transatlantic slave trade, (rev.
ed). Thomson-Shore, Inc.
[8] http://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kill-1111789
(accessed 6/13/2014) provides documentation.
[9] See his book, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor.
[10] Teilhard de Chardin, Phenomenon of Man.
[11] Here I refer to the way the work of
Jon Sobrino is cited by by Terrence E Rynne, in Ghandi and Jesus: The saving Power of Nonviolence. Sobrino is the
great liberation theologian from El Salvador, whose vision of the Galilean Jesus
is transformative.
