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 Abandoning an Incomplete GospelHow one leader arrived at a more complete understanding of the Word of Life.
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I was abducted by an alien gospel. At least that seems like the best way to describe what happened when I was 11 years old. One day, during a summertime visit to my aunt's home, I found some matches and played with them in the back yard. As she was putting me to bed, my aunt, who had been tipped off by a neighbor, asked me if I had been playing with matches. Being an 11-year-old, I naturally said, "No." "God knows if you were playing with matches," my aunt said sternly. "If you are lying, you are committing a sin. If you die tonight without having your sins forgiven, you will go to hell." That seemed awfully severe, but having burned my fingers earlier in the day, I didn't want to risk getting close to eternal fire. I eagerly asked Jesus to forgive me for lying, playing with matches, and an assortment of other sins. I fell asleep relieved that if I died during the night I would go to heaven. Now I was saved! But was I? Had my aunt's "evangelism" ushered me into the new life that Jesus offers and that the Scriptures describe—a life of love, joy, freedom, and power? Or had I been abducted by a narrow, alien version of Christianity, which consisted of trusting Jesus to rescue me from hell and then faithfully trying to get others to trust Jesus for the same rescue? In one sense, my aunt's evangelistic effort was effective. For 30 years I have been trying to follow the Jesus I prayed to that night, and I have been trying to introduce others to him. But I have become frustrated with the evangelism that I received and have practiced myself. More and more, I've sensed that the gospel I was told, and which I've been passing along, ignores the substance of life in its hurry to save me from eternal damnation. Rethinking DefinitionsThis frustration caused me to revisit some old friends. Anyone raised in the evangelical Protestant world will be familiar with these memory verses:
For years my definitions for these italicized words went something like this. Lost—Someone who is going to hell because he has not believed in Jesus for the payment of his sins. Saved—Someone who has eternal life because she has believed in Jesus and asked him to forgive her sins. Believe—To agree with the proposition that Jesus, God's Son, paid for our sins, thereby giving us eternal life. Generally we show that we "believe" in Jesus by praying a prayer asking him to forgive our sins and come into our lives. Eternal life—Life in heaven with Jesus when I die. As millions of evangelicals have been taught to ask: "If you were to die tonight, are you sure you would go to heaven?" |             | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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