A number of questions have been sent in lately regarding the topic of being “loved beyond our wildest imagination” and its implications. Some have wondered where that phrase comes from, which is not only part of the Phoenix Affirmations (#9) but is also repeated in the blessing given each week at Countryside Church. Others have wondered about the implications of the phrase, particularly as it may apply to those who engage in abusive or otherwise destructive behavior toward others. “What does this kind of love mean for the murderer, the rapist, etc.,” is one form of the question. Or “What about Hitler – is he loved beyond his wildest imagination, too?”
I have to catch a plane to Scottsdale in a couple hours (our eldest daughter, Arianna, is graduating!), so I can only address the question of origins right now, which gets us into the notion of salvation along with it. I’ll get to the question of implications for mean and nasty people later in the week. Regarding the origin of “loved bey0nd our wildest imagination”:
Nearly a decade ago I was noticing that we in the more liberal/progressive end of the theological swimming pool do not talk much about salvation. We use the word – occasionally – but we really don’t have much to say about it. In fact, many people seem downright embarassed about the term thanks in no small part to the way it has been thrown around in circles where salvation mostly means salvation from everlasting torture in hell. Having rejected the essentially unbiblical (yet very popular) notion that God would torture people for eternity if they don’t please God in a certain way, and with it the notion that one would need to be “saved” from such a fate, liberals/progressives have largely let any notion of salvation fall by the wayside.
I found this situation unfortunate, and still do. While hell as popularly conceived may be an unbiblical notion, salvation is certainly not. Salvation is spoken of – and sung about – practically from cover to cover in the Bible, and has continued to be an important feature of Christian faith all the way up to the present era. But what does salvation mean if it doesn’t mean salvation from eternal damnation?
This may seem like a purely academic issue to some, but the rubber really hits the road when we consider the implications of our concept of salvation (or lack thereof) in the real world. For instance, if you aren’t being saved from hell, does it matter that one be a person of faith at all? Most Christians would (hopefully) say “Yes.” But does it matter in a way that’s significant? that makes a definitive qualitative difference in your life? If so, how do you characterize this difference? How does having Christian faith lead you to understandings and actions that you wouldn’t be thinking/acting on if you did not have faith in the God of Jesus? If you can’t point to any significant difference that faith makes in your life, can you really claim that there is any compelling reason to have faith to begin with? In fact, wouldn’t it be quite a bit more compelling to conclude that it is better not to have faith, since Christianity asks for such serious commitments from us, like tithing, and praying, and going to church, etc.? Why would any reasonable person do and give all these things if faith makes no discernible difference in people’s lives?
For fundamentalists, all this is talk is beside the point. Faith saves them from hell and gets them into heaven. What bigger difference is there than that? And this belief is precisely why a person might be persuaded to introduce her or his neighbor to Jesus. Ninety-nine percent of all the evangelism done by fundamentalist Christians – and they do a lot of evangelism compared to everyone else – is done precisely to “save” people from the fires of hell. In other words, fundamentalists have a very clear notion of what salvation is, and this notion compels them not only to be people of faith themselves but to evangelize others.
Not so with liberal/progressives. Salvation is a “squishy” term. We’re really not sure what it means or implies, and therefore it almost goes without saying that we’re not going to try particularly hard to make new friends of Jesus. And we wonder why all the mainline denominations have decreased in members every year since the mid-sixties?!
A decade ago, I wasn’t content with this situation. I looked out over the mainline Chrisitan landscape and saw a whole lot of folks for whom Christianity was mainly a cultural phoenomenon that simply was blessing whatever the dominant culture of the time decided was worthy of blessing. I saw a faith whose message had essentially devolved into “Be good and don’t rock the boat too much.” And I said to myself, “This is what Jesus died for??” While I do not subscribe to the theology of substitutionary atonement (the concept that Jesus had to die in order to take on a punishment that God was going to give us, and thus save us from hell), I do very much believe that Jesus’ death was meaningful, and that he died for a lot more than simply for us to live a decent and orderly life.
So I determined to come up with a new definition of salvation (i.e., a statement about why the faith matters so much to me that I would, in fact, strive to introduce friends and neighbors to Jesus if they hadn’t been introduced already). Or, short of a new definition, I simply wanted to find one that would resonate with theological ears tuned similarly to my own. Thus, I launched into a six-week preaching series at Scottsdale Congregational Church called “Does Jesus Save?” I had no definition of salvation going into the series, but I figured I’d have one by the end of it! And, by gum, I actually did. The definition has stuck with me ever since.
So what’s my definition of salvation? Salvation is discovering that we are loved beyond our wildest imagination and determining to orient our lives according to this discovery. Period.
Please note that there are two halves to this statement. Salvation is not simply discovering you are loved beyond what you can comprehend. It also has to do with deciding to manifest this love in your everyday life. Note that this second half is not “salvation by works.” It imlies nothing about the successfulness of our attempt. But it does acknowledge that salvation is more than just an intellectual phenomenon. We may be “loved beyond our wildest imagination” whether we act on our discovery or not, but this discovery really can’t do any good for us until it also moves us to live and understand life differently than we did before the discovery.
