I’ve been writing lately about what I see as the problem with the liberal/mainline church. I’ve talked about Liberal Vs. Progressive, why we’re not growing, and said that I think Mark Driscoll is right. Last week I shifted a bit and raised the question “Why Christianity?” and then offered my reasons as to “Why I Am A Christian.” I want to continue in that vein of raising a question and then offering my answer on a variety of different topics. I’m not trying to provide definitive answers, but rather to raise what I see as the provocative and/or essential questions that the church needs to be able to have answer for (even if that answer is to say that this isn’t an idea we need).
Today I want to ask about the “salvation moment.” In my church growing up there was a lot of emphasis placed upon this salvation moment. You wanted to be able to point to a particular moment when you “accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour.” Often this moment was predicated on praying a prayer “asking Jesus into your heart”. These moments were (in my experience) often the result of pressure whether in the form of an emotional altar call, a threat of Hell, or an older teen “helping” a small child to pray a prayer that he or she didn’t understand. This was also the moment that all evangelism led up to: moving someone to the moment of decision.
As I’ve left the church of my youth (and especially as I have left behind the doctrine of Hell), I have left behind the idea of a salvation moment.
I’m wondering if I/we need to revisit that idea. Is there a moment (or even moments) in our liberal/mainline/progressive experience that a person can point to and say, “This is the moment I decided to follow Jesus”? And to push it even farther, is that moment even important?
For those who grow up in the church, those who have absorbed the faith over the years, what does salvation mean? If you convert as an adult there is a clear moment (or at least trajectory) of decision. You have decided to make the way of Jesus the way you attempt to live, you have thrown in your lot with these other Christ followers, but for those who have never left the church, what does salvation mean, especially if you believe in a universal salvation?
If we understand salvation as a journey, a lifelong process, is there still a way to account for a salvation moment? Is this a question that matters to you?
Speaking as an INTP philosophy junkie: “What’s the phenomenology of decision?” The experience of being Born Again™ seems… busy. Like there’s a whole lot of stuff going on, an ensemble of parts and processes that would be really interesting to unpack and isolate and examine. And in my mainline experience, no, I’ve never been Born Again™ because I’ve never had any single moment that was like that.
What I have had is a year-long constellation of moments. From memory I can identify all of them, date most of them, and time one of them to within a few minutes. No single point was decisive (not even the timed one, which involved a decision) – but the gestalt *is.* It hasn’t ended yet (I was saved; I am being saved; too soon to go on), but I can definitely single out a moment before which it hadn’t begun.
(I’m not sure how to class myself; I’m not an adult convert, but maybe a late bloomer.)
More in a bit; this computer’s out of time.
Yes! Exactly. I never had a moment of “conversion” either, and the church I attended at the time I found faith never expected me to. I like the idea of the “constellation of moments.” That describes exactly how I felt (and still feel). When we ended up at an evangelical church, they expected us to pinpoint our moment of salvation. I said it was a long process, and I was told that the moment it all “clicked” could be my moment. It was rather confusing.
…so yeah.
As to its importance, that depends on “important.” For personal reasons, for rhetorical reasons, for the self-awareness that praxis demands, it’s *useful.* For pastoral reasons for specific people, it may be helpful.
But I don’t think it should be emphasized, and it shouldn’t be demanded. Salvation isn’t a moment and a feeling; it’s a life and a praxis.
I’d view the situation as dialectic: experience and decisions are by definition processes which occur over time (often, significant lengths of time). However, often decisions can have important turning points or moments of clarity in which the longer, latent changes become explicit. Sometimes these might be more evident in hind-sight, sometimes they might be quite obvious in the moment. A few might have rather dramatic conversion experiences (Damascus Road style). But to insist on a singular moment is, I think, misguided and manipulative–manipulative of individuals, but also of G-d himself, as if it tells G-d how a person must be saved (because we want to put a numerical value to our evangelism efforts).
“But to insist on a singular moment is, I think, misguided and manipulative–manipulative of individuals, but also of G-d himself, as if it tells G-d how a person must be saved…”
THIS. And oftentimes it’s not about numbering the saved, but delineating the damned. (Growing up mainline taught me that the sooner They started talking salvation, the more damned We were. It really discourages talking about a lot of things.)
In the church I was raised in (Roman Catholic) an individual does not require a moment of personal revelatory experience. The moment of salvation is the same for all, the Death and Resurrection of Christ.
None the less the literature of the Church, especially hagiography, is full of such moments from Saul’s conversion, to Augustine’s and beyond.
Perhaps then these moments are an important part of only some Christian’s experience? Something that may be essential in the life of A, but we cannot think B is necessarily incomplete without one.
I really like this idea (and had never thought of it like that); that for some people it might be necessary and for others less so. Thanks for sharing.