Q & R: Saving FROM and TO
A reader writes …
Thanks for new book, ANKoC! Most of the questions you name have troubled me for years. I find hope in your fresh responses, knowing that you will continue to grow and change along with us.
I have been following the conversations generated by your book with great interest. A common thread in these conversations makes me think there is also this vital, underlying question, “What is salvation?” I am hearing many different answers…
FROM hell TO heaven
FROM injustice TO justice
FROM racial division TO beloved community
FROM environmental collapse TO ecological, global healing
FROM sin (broken relationship between God/others) TO righteousness (right relationship between God/others)
In your books I discern “salvation” as
FROM unsustainable use of the planet TO renewable use and stewardship of the planet
FROM structural injustice TO daily bread for all justice
FROM threat of global destruction through violence TO harmony among nations
FROM sick faith stories TO healing stories of faith rooted in Jesus
FROM Bible as “owner’s manual” TO Bible as record of “surprising, in-breaking grace”
FROM trashing “those people” TO treasuring “all people”
Am I reading you correctly? What is “salvation”? What do we need to be rescued FROM? What do we need to be rescued TO?
May the conversation continue!
I like the directions you’re exploring here. Sadly, for many people, the from/to is preoccupied with hell/heaven. In the Old Testament, the primary saving was from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. But that flowers out into all the kinds of things you mention here. I might add, echoing language of the New Testament, FROM “this present evil age” to “participation in the kingdom – or dream, or sacred ecosystem, or dance, or beloved community – of God.”