In Jesus Name: Week 3
The Anti-Freedom of a Personal Salvation
A Super Creepy Picture of Salvation
Before we begin, here’s a question on which I would like for you to reflect:
Growing up, what stories did you hear about a person accepting Jesus as their personal savior, or a person being born-again, or a person being saved?
The popular online Christian Evangelical ministry Got Questions was asked the following: How do I get right with God?
Here’s their answer:
If you want to get right with God, here is a sample prayer. Remember, saying this prayer or any other prayer will not save you. It is only trusting in Christ that can save you from sin. This prayer is simply a way to express to God your faith in Him and thank Him for providing for your salvation. "God, I know that I have sinned against You and am deserving of punishment. But Jesus Christ took the punishment that I deserve so that through faith in Him I could be forgiven. I place my trust in You for salvation. Thank You for Your wonderful grace and forgiveness – the gift of eternal life! Amen!"
Now I could spend the rest of my writing career expressing my feelings about this (non) answer, but just for today, let me start by saying that white colonial enslavers asked a similar question: How do we get right with God and justify kidnapping, selling, and enslaving human beings?
And ministers and pastors asked a similar question: How does the Christian Church get right with God when its pulpits are filled with oppressors whose blood money fills its coffers?
Another Super Creepy Picture of Salvation
Much of Christian theology on personal salvation is informed by the gospel writer John and his story about Nicodemus and Jesus.
Here’s the gist of the story: late one night, probably while he was studying (since pharisees traditionally studied at night) Nicodemus went out beneath the cover of darkness to have a conversation with Jesus, a lowly carpenter’s son turned superstar. He wanted to know who Jesus truly was. He wanted to know how he, an ordinary man, was able to perform miracles and speak the language of a studied and trained Rabbi when he was only a Nazarene carpenter.
Nicodemus was a wealthy, highly-educated Pharisee—a sacred keeper of Jewish law. He was also a member of the Sanhedrin, which was basically the supreme or highest court of the Jews. He was a man far above Jesus’s station and the fact that such an esteemed man lowered himself to visit Jesus says a lot about the core of Nicodemus’s heart and the weight of Jesus's message and presence in the Judean-Galilean jewish community.
Nicodemus began their conversation with a bit of flattery: “Teacher, some of us have been talking. You are obviously a teacher who has come from God. The signs You are doing are proof that God is with You.” And Jesus took over the conversation, leaving Nicodemus with more questions than explanations.
Part of that under-the-cover-of-night covert and private conversation between these two men who represent different interpretations of what it means to be holy is what the whole Christian faith depends on:
Yes, God so loved the world
as to give the Only Begotten [Son],
that whoever believes may not die,
but have eternal life.
God sent the Only Begotten [Son] into the world
not to condemn the world,
but that through the Only Begotten [Son]
the world might be saved.
Whoever believes in the Only Begotten [Son] avoids judgment,
but whoever doesn’t believe is judged already
for not believing in the name
of the Only Begotten of God.
This is the verse on which missionaries are sent into the world to spread the “good news.” The Church has considered this verse to be critical to the Christian faith. We base the “prayer of salvation” on it. Even though Jesus said nothing about anyone needing to perform any ritual prayer to be “saved.” In fact, he had a lot to say against public ritual for the sake of belonging.
Still, Christians use John 3:16 to “spread the gospel.” But Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount—which includes the Beatitudes—was certainly Jesus’s most declarative and public message, filled with “good news” for its downtrodden, marginalized and underprivileged listeners.
Unlike John 3:16, which is only a sliver of Jesus’s one-on-one conversation with Nicodemus, his Sermon on the Mount was for the masses. And it spoke of a communal salvation, not a personal one.
But it’s easier to justify the tyranny of colonization and chattel slavery if salvation is personal. If the good news is the gospel of salvation, then even the most vile enslaver can be saved—and so can the Black souls that they enslave—without the system of oppression falling. It’s much harder to continue to persecute bodies, withhold common goods, and shackle and label an entire people group as heathens if the Sermon on the Mount is indeed the “good news” that saves.
For how could the church continue to cash enslaver’s blood tithe “in Jesus name” when Jesus said to his community of believers:
You cannot serve two masters at the same time. You will hate one and love the other, or you will be loyal to one and not care about the other. You cannot serve God and Money at the same time. (Matthew 6:24)
And it’s hard to separate enslaved Black mothers from their children “in Jesus name”, when Jesus said to his community of believers:
God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)
And it’s hard to rampage an entire Indigenous community “in Jesus name” when Jesus said to his community of believers :
Treat others as you want them to treat you. This is what the Law and the Prophets are all about. (Matthew 7: 12)