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“If you were to die tonight, do you now beyond a shallow of a doubt that you are going to heaven?”
This was the question asked of me by a well-intentioned Sunday School teacher shortly after my first visit to a Baptist church in 5th grade. At the time, such an imminent death had not even crossed my mind, but such an urgent question will strike fear into even the most healthy young teenager. I was later trained to ask this question of others, along with the crucial follow-up, “Do you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior?”
Obviously the only right answer was “yes,” a “yes” I was more than willing to give when they told me that saying yes to that question meant that I never had to go to confession in my old Catholic church again. This was once and for all. Come to the altar, pray a simple prayer, get dunked in a hot tub in the front of the sanctuary, and all was forgiven. If that’s all it took to know for certain that I wouldn’t burn in hell for eternity, no matter what mistakes or sins I would inevitably commit in my life, the response was easy - “Sign me up!”
It took a long time for me to realize that while believing in Jesus is important, the real question Jesus was concerned with was whether people would become his disciples and follow him, learning to live and love as he did. This issue of discipleship was a life-long journey, not a one time prayer, and while it was a far more difficult call, it seems to me much more aligned with the gospels than a magic formula prayer which Jesus never actually asked anyone to pray.
“What must I do to be saved?”, people would ask him. Jesus responded to one wealthy man by asking if he obeyed all the commandments and then told him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor (Mark 10:17-22). There’s a lot to unpack in this scripture, but I want to focus just a moment on what Jesus does not say. He never says anything about believing in him. He never says anything about dying and going to heaven. He never offers a prayer to be prayed or invites the man to be baptized. All of the things that I were taught were absolutely essential for my eternal salvation are simply not in the text. How could Jesus miss such a major life and death point when asked explicitly how to get saved?
Throughout the gospels, salvation comes to people in a number of ways. People who encountered Jesus were “saved” primarily by being restored, healed or made whole. They were given welcome, acceptance, freedom, justice and reconciliation with God here on earth, as it would be in heaven; not just promised a ticket to heaven when they died.
Salvation is not a transaction to get to heaven after death; rather it is an experience of love and beauty and of paradise here and now.
Diana Butler Bass, Freeing Jesus, 98
It is hard to love as God so loves the world when all we care about is escaping to heaven.
On the other hand, when we fully experience, participate in, and share God’s love in this life, we need not worry about the next. The same God who walks with us on earth walks with us through the veil of death.
Salvation is not for our future alone, it is a new life that begins here and now.
