The only way

This post is pretty important to me in that it has consumed my thoughts a quite a bit of late. However, I'm listening to Weezer's Red Album for the first time, and it's pretty catchy at the moment. I don't have the discipline to quit one or the other of these two activities, so who knows how this post'll turn out.

I read recently (regretfully, I can't recall where) that a Barna-esque poll found that 67% of Evangelicals don't think that Jesus is the only way to heaven, including President Bush. (Not that I look to politicians to be theologians, or even Christians, but that fact was part of the point of the article.) For all I know, Bush could have been giving homage to the most important religion to a president, that is, America. The hallmarks of this religion include vague references to God, but always affirming self, capitalism and inclusivity.

I've posted some wonderings about universalism of late. I'm coming more to the conclusion that universalism is an open question, but that any salvation is definitely only through Jesus. Usually when someone affirms Jesus is the only way, that indicates they are extremely conservative, say-the-prayer-or-else type of folk. But in my christology studies, I'm seeing the broad effectiveness of Jesus's life, sacrifice and resurrection. I'm also seeing anew the Father's extravagant grace (which is a significant understatement). It would be scandalous for a person to be as open and gracious as God is, let alone for a deity. For the righteousness, justice and holiness that are ascribed to (and surely true of) God, he sure behaves irresponsibly. I have a feeling that non-Christians don't know of this, and Christians aren't willing to tell. We've reverse engineered the image of God onto himself from our own twisted reflection of him.

What if God really wanted to redeem everyone (including the rightly infamous Hitlers, Stalins and Amins)? If we attribute infinite power, glory, grace, etc. to God, wouldn't that be his prerogative? Particularly if we engage the big story of the Bible, we will begin to see how insane God's graciousness appears. If we continue with our systematic denuding the Bible of its message by picking sentences that we think fit our picture of God the best, we will continue to create our god in our own image.

We've made up a lot of stuff about how the righteous people before the time of Jesus were looking forward to him as the means of their salvation. That's mostly a crock. They trusted in the Creator God, firstly, and if they were privy to the revelation, they trusted in the Covenant God. But there were people who got that people are meant to love and serve one another. I would say that this is a result of revelation as well. Regardless, God will be faithful to his faithful, whether they name Jesus or not. This idea stops short of universalism, but it's still good to muse about. If, in fact, people who haven't heard of Jesus are "in," what does that mean for missions? Shouldn't this fact just make us lazy? No, I would contend that the more understanding we have, the better off we are; the less understanding, the less we are able to live as fully human.

TF Torrance posits in his book/lecture series "The Mediation of Christ" that Jesus reveals God to humanity and reconciles humanity to God (and God to humanity). These twin functions of revelation and reconciliation are held together in Jesus as the nexus of deity and humanity. Jesus bore all our struggles as the new Adam, meaning all the temptation that fallen humanity has given in to over the generations, he bore in himself. As the new creation, Jesus has emptied temptation and sin and death of its power. But he is also God who is showing his creation how to live. If God chose to have all the horrors done to Jesus, and his response to them, be sufficient to show humanity in its entirety how to live in the new, restored creation, I guess I'd be content with that.

All that to say, Jesus is the only way of reconciliation to God. Whether that means only the people who say some pagan incantation (sinner's prayer) get to heaven forever when they die, or whether that means that God is hopelessly enamored with every one of the people he has created, even though we continually, actively attempt to destroy his creation, and that he wants to restore his creation and his humans so that they can dwell forever in the new creation serving him, I'm not really sure. I would lean my inklings toward the latter in that false dichotomy.