What I Believe (or The Source of My Hope)

I believe salvation to be necessary because, at our creation, Man chose to question God’s perfect plan for life on Earth; doubt and the disobedience (sin) were replicated by person after person, perpetuating through generations and establishing trends of sin that entrenched even the holiest of individuals and separated them from God. After all, it is always easier to act in the same way as those surrounding you than in accordance to a higher ideal for which there is no clear example here on Earth. God spoke to the holier of men and sent prophets – Abraham, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah – but still, something greater was needed in order to inspire in Man a full desire to know and obey God. Thus, God sent His Son, Jesus, to Earth to be that clear, sinless example for us on Earth, to establish God as someone tangible in our lives, and to express the incomparable, undying love God has for us – made known by Jesus dying on the cross for us. Therefore, when we say that we believe He has paid our debt, we welcome God’s gesture of love to us, that He loved us so much that He came into our lives and made the ultimate sacrifice, one that none of us could imagine ourselves committing, even in the service of our most beloved friends. We say Jesus has paid our debt and paved our way to salvation because we see how we previously ignored the fullness of God’s work in our lives and His personal interest in us and therefore could not live in God’s eternal kingdom-made-perfect; but by accepting God’s gift of love for us, we recognize His enormous love, omnipotence, and hand in our creation, and, because of our deference for and returned love to God, are offered eternal life in his perfect Heaven. God Himself went down to the depths of Hell in this most awesome act, and all we have to do is say “yes!”

Of course, we all know plenty of people who believe in God as the sole, real deity, pray for salvation through faith in Jesus, and are welcomed, unquestioningly, by God into His kingdom without doing anything further in their daily lives. It saddens me because I see them as shortchanged by their idea of salvation: To qualify it as something whose benefits are only visible after our earthly death is to limit it, to almost miss the point. Salvation is something that not only provides promise for life after death, but also life in life! When Jesus came to Earth, He provided the perfect example for us about how to maximize each of our days; He gave us a glimpse of what Earth was created to be; He provided for us the instruction we needed in order to experience a fullness in life previously unseen to us. So while some may find application of Scriptural instructions too difficult or too much of a nuisance, those who choose to be Jesus’s disciples on a daily basis find salvation in each of those days. They experience renewed hope, vision, love, and communion with God and His creation.

I do not believe there to be any other route to daily salvation than that through Jesus Christ. However, I do believe that any individual actively seeking spiritual connection – especially through a Heavenly God (as opposed to an idol god) – has recognized the undeniable presence of a higher power and has sought communion with God in whatever way they know how. In this way, an individual – be him Muslim or Jewish or Hindu (directing their interaction toward one of the faces of God) or otherwise – is searching for and praying to the very same God we worship; they simply have not recognized the sacrifice of Jesus or the existence of the Trinity and are therefore left misdirected and incomplete in their faith. I do not mean to say that their faith is enough for salvation, but I do understand them to be seeking God – the same God as Christians – in whatever way they know how. There are certain instances in which I believe their faith doctrines are enough: If no one has ever shared the Gospel and the sacrifice of Jesus with them, then there is no way in which our gracious God can punish them throughout eternity for not believing something to which they were never exposed. In addition, I believe our most gracious God will redeem His people Israel, and it is what gives me hope for my Jewish friends and neighbors who have too often been given good reason to be cynical toward the idea of Jesus as Messiah in our culture of materialism and daily distancing from Jesus-like living.