Possible future expectations need to be confident in order to be effective in shaping present life.
At least, "confident" to the degree that we can be sure of anything in this mortal life of change and uncertainty.
When I was a medical student I was confident of becoming a doctor; therefore that expectation shaped my present behaviour so that I did far more than the minimum necessary to pass qualifying exams. I looked ahead to being a doctor - and wanted to equip myself for that situation - so I did extra classes, sought ought extra teaching - made more effort to prepare myself.
In other words, as a medical student I was willing, able, indeed keen to forgo present gratifications (to the extent of which I was capable); when this seemed likely to contribute to my future state as a doctor.
In contrast; as an adolescent and young adult I did not expect to become a husband and father - and did nothing strenuous to prepare for that eventuality - made no serious or significant sacrifices of pleasure, or creation, or career to that end.
The vague possibility that I might become a husband, a father; was insufficiently motivating to shape my life.
If I had been confident that was what I wanted and would likely happen - things would, presumably, have been different.
What about the possible future state of salvation - the possibility of resurrection to eternal Heavenly life?
The lesson of the doctor and husband examples, is that we need to want and be confident of a future state, in order that it shall shape our present life.
Therefore; if it is desired that Christians' present behaviour be shaped by resurrection; then our understanding of salvation will need to be one that could instil confidence that we could get it if we want it!
(This understanding of salvation as something anyone can have if he wants it and will follow Jesus; is set out in The Fourth Gospel... Assuming this book can be read and understood as an autonomous text.)
By contrast; the traditional mainstream Church understandings of salvation that render it not just uncertain, but unlikely.
e.g. Because these Churches regard salvation as requiring a wide range of particular and mandatory behaviours, knowledge and judgment of which is administered by A (particular) Church
And because damnation is regarded as the natural default state - render our hope of salvation something about which it is impossible (and indeed counter-productive) to be confident...
Which understanding thereby renders our expectation of salvation so feebly motivating as to be incapable of shaping our present life.
7 comments:
Surely most mainstream churches now lean in the direction of universalism, in their preaching and presentation if not in their actual doctrine?
I remember as a child, it occurred to me that people who believe they will live forever and people who believe they will live for an infinitesimal moment seem to live much the same way, and how strange this was...
@M - Universalism, if meant in the sense that everybody goes to Christian Heaven, is a pernicious idea - for several reasons.
It completely annihilates all individual freedom and responsibility. It means that all people of all religions - plus those who are indifferent to or hate religion - are supposedly compelled into the Christian idea of Heaven.
Universalism also renders this earthly mortal life - with its many pains and sufferings (for many people) a waste of time - a mere delay, before being forced into a Heaven that may be unwanted. If everyone goes to Heaven for eternity in the end, then why not go directly to Heaven?
And this, in turn, makes God's plan of salvation into either a nonsense, or (in some cases) a kind of deliberately-inflicted torment.
No - universalism just won't do, for Christians at any rate! - since Christianity is rooted in the intrinsic nature and goodness of individual freedom and love (and love must be freely chosen).
Well, I'm not a universalist, so I agree with you, though the thought of anybody being lost forever is the most dreadful one possible. Some Catholic theologians (not all of them liberals) say we have a reasonable hope all may be saved eventually...but even this is very controversial.
I don't think it's a good thing that mainstream Christian denominations, including Catholicism, now tend to suggest (passively if not actively) that everybody goes to Heaven.
Some Churches say that only their members can be saved (not all members believe that, eg Roman Catholics). I think the most common notion among moderns is that everybody except really bad people go to heaven.
Many are offended by the notion that some horrible criminal can repent & be saved, or that an unrepentant more or less good person would be damned.
Consider the view one sees in movies & TV; if these weren't popular, nobody would watch.
@Phil - yes, and it is nonsense from a Christian POV - at least as I understand it.
At the extreme, salvation has "nothing" to do with good behaviour (else did Jesus focus his ire on the Pharisees, who were presumably exemplary in terms of the Law - and was so relaxed about tax collectors, publicans, thieves etc) - salvation has everything to do with the desire and commitment to follow Jesus.
Desire for and confidence in salvation will presumably affect someone's life for the better - but the starting point may be very low indeed - so measuring behaviour against averages is meaningless.
A further problem is that people focus on avoiding a few sins (murder, rape, theft, fornication etc) and ignore the most prevalent and defining sins of our society - such as fear, resentment, despair, untruthfulness - which often afflict the best behaved more than anyone else (especially untruthfulness) .
How people behave is mostly a matter of heredity, upbringing and social pressures - and not much a matter of choice.
Plenty of people around the world and in the West are just made as weak willed, negatively socially malleable, unintelligent, impulsive - or enslaved by fear, poverty, pain, sickness. Yet these can choose salvation and follow Jesus.
Nowadays, the best behaved (and kindest) people are mostly those who are utterly indifferent to or loathe God and Christ. And many Christians are feckless lawbreakers.
There is an extremely moving ancient prayer at the end of the intercessions on Good Friday in the Roman Catholic liturgy. "Let us pray, dearly beloved,
to God the Father almighty,
that he may cleanse the world of all errors,
banish disease, drive out hunger,
unlock prisons, loosen fetters,
granting to travellers safety, to pilgrims return,
health to the sick, and salvation to the dying."
(English text after the reformed translation in the time of Benedict XVI. It's fairly accurate - the Latin text can be checked online.)
From the 1970's on, the laconic line "unlock prisons, loosen fetters", was translated as "and free those unjustly deprived of liberty".
If you wanted an example of how the official church in English-speaking countries for forty-odd years allowed Christian hope to be distorted, for the sake of modish acceptability, you needed to look no further.
Good Friday is not a day to worry about who's innocent, who's guilty, among the rest of the human race, compared with its Saviour.
In the cruel hard Catholic Spain of the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the King used to go in person to a jail to visit a prisoner (a repentant one) condemned to death, kiss his hand, and escort him out into freedom. For complicated reasons the City Council of Malaga preserves the same privilege, abandoned by the royal house, and exercises it to this day. The abolition of the death penalty takes something of the edge off it, but the whole thing shows how we have nowadays forgotten what mercy means, while our supposedly harsh and judgemental forefathers understood.
And I totally agree with you, universalism makes nonsense of ay true hope, as once understood.
Thanks for that, Chris.
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