Questioning Salvation and Conversion

There are several faith related issues that I’ve found clumsy to explain as I try to span the difference between my current faith and worldview and that of Bible believing American evangelicals I have known and loved while living in the southwest.
The next few entries will be short summaries of my thinking and influential books regarding topics I have changed my mind about....

      John Wesley taught us that there is previenient grace, salvific grace, and sanctifying grace. God chases after us and loves us before we love Him. He forgives our sins and allows us unmediated audience with Him. And He prunes our bad habits and makes us holy day by day.


    I have heard many sermons in American evangelical environments about getting saved - being converted from a sinner to a saint; from belonging to the world to belonging to God. And the gist was that it could happen in a moment - over the course of one simple guided prayer. I was later instructed on how to lead others through this process. And, I have possibly lead meetings and opened the time for such an opportunity. What Baptists call making a decision. The alter call. “Come to Jesus.” And Billy Graham has Just as I am play.

    God is certainly the One who hears the cry of the destitute. If a person is lost, at the end of her rope, in moral peril, and she cries out to God... He listens and comes quickly. He saves us. But, salvation is not the same thing as conversion. In my experience there have been very few people whose stories have one climactic moment where God delivers them and they are from that moment following Jesus. Most people I know have had many experiences of God working in their lives before they convert their life to a discipleship to Jesus. Many have even made decision after decision at consecutive alter-calls, and continue to live in unconverted ways. Does that mean their momentary commitments were insincere? I don’t believe that.

    The tent revival message had a lot to do with understanding that Jesus was the son of God, and he forgave us our sins and provided the atoning sacrifice, and it follows that the listeners should make a decision to commit their lives to Him. When I think about conversion, I no longer think it’s primarily about gaining a new understanding of who God is and what he has done. I have been influenced by the Schools for Conversion, and some other ideas about discipleship. We can say, “I was born again, again!”

   Many of God’s teachings in Scripture include a call to repentance. We ought to be turning away from some unhealthy thing or toward a new thing again and again in our lives. We turn from sin and toward holiness. We turn from rebellion to submission. We turn from pride to humility. These conversions happen the whole life long. Wesleyans call it sanctification - the process of becoming holy. Little by little we are being converted to the way of Jesus. As individuals and as a called out society (the church). So conversion is a regular passage from one way of living and being to another. The bigger underlying work of God in all of this is redemption - He is the redeemer of people, places, things, pasts and presents, conversations - the whole earth will be made new. (But that’s for the next post!)

    To end this post, I’m gonna’ give my take on salvation, as we’ve already covered the conversion bit. My southern evangelical friends are excited to know who’s in and who’s out. In college a guy knocked on my dorm room to ask if I knew with certainty where I would end up if I died that night. Two of my grandparents passed away this year. Who is granted eternal life and why?

    Salvation came to Zacceaus when he decided to give to the poor and reconcile with those he had cheated. Those Jesus says are weeping and gnashing their teeth in Matthew 25 are suffering because they did not show kindness to their neighbors - so also goes it for the Rich Man in Luke 16. At the end of the sermon on the mount Jesus warns that some will be turned away because they did not hear the words of the Lord and obey them. The rich young ruler needs to sell his stuff and give the money to the poor. Nicodemus is told he needs to be born again. Jesus doesn’t have a rote answer. Why do so many Western Christians?

    When we reduce the Gospel to a way to get into heaven when we die, we really are not preaching the message of Jesus. Jesus spoke of the Kingdom, that is wherever the will of God is actually happening (Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven). So the Kingdom is not the afterlife. Not exactly. It has a lot to do with how we treat people. It’s a social or corporate reality as much as it’s an individual inclination. It is Shalom, righteousness and joy!

    Eternal life. How we understand these two words matters here. Eternal ~ aionain: now and forever, not just after death. Life ~ zoe: fully and spiritually alive and aware, not numb. Not waiting for another dispensation. I do believe there is a paradise after death that we can enter and have unhindered communion with God. We have a chance to live the eternal life now, in the Kingdom of God. Jesus showed us the way. By following the Way we are preparing for eternal life with God after death. “The flames of heaven are hotter than the flames of hell.” We’ll have to live without racism, judgment, hatred, slander, worry, gluttony, greed... We need to repent and learn a new way for today and tomorrow.

Note: I don’t have room to write about what heaven/ hell is like. I don’t really know anyway!

I’m reading through Rob Bell’s Love Wins - it’s a good read on this. Also, N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope