For some, the central message of Christianity is about personal salvation. What it is exactly that we need saving from is debatable, depending on who you ask: from the fires of hell; from ourselves, from an apocalyptic end to the world as we know it. But I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately and I’m beginning to think that we’re going about the whole salvation thing the wrong way.
The idea first arose when I was going over the possible questions to be included in my next Banned Questions book, which is about Christians. The question reads:
When a baby is conceived, where do Christians believe that soul comes from? Is it created at that moment or has it been floating in existence in the universe from the beginning of time?
For starters, this assumes a relatively modern Western mindset that places the individual center stage. This has not always been the case. In fact, human beings were more community-minded for most of history before the fierce individualism of today’s world took hold. The ancient Jewish notion of sin wasn’t so much focused on individual deeds as it was referring to the collective well-being and orientation of an entire group.
Taking this difference in perspective and applying it to the concept of the human soul, I began to wonder if we’re beginning with a fundamental distortion of what it means to have a soul. While mulling this idea over in bed at 2 in the morning, a quote from Louis CK’s show, Louie, came to mind. In this particular scene, Louis CK is talking to a friend, Eddie (Doug Stanhope) who is contemplating suicide, and who is looking to CK for a reason not to follow through with his plan. Finally exasperated, CK hits him between the eyes with a profound truth:
“You know what, ” he says to Eddie, “it’s not your life. It’s life. Life is bigger than you. If you can imagine that. Life isn’t something that you possess; it’s something that you take part in, and you witness.”
Amen.
Somewhere along the way we got this idea that we were given this thing known as a life, which has a beginning and end as defined by our own personal human experience on Earth. But what if CK is right? What if life just is, and we’re jumping in mid-stream to participate in an ongoing conversation that was, is and will be much larger than us? How, then, does this change our perspective on our right to life, or our responsibility for it, be it occupied by us or someone else?
If we really begin so see no distinction between our own lives and the lives of others – at the deepest existential level – how profoundly might this affect the way we understand everything else?
Back to the idea of the human soul. I’ve always imagined souls like the question suggests. There’s some sort of warehouse somewhere that checks out souls as there are bodies to employ them. Perhaps they get re-used, or perhaps they’re as unique as fingerprints. But lately I’m beginning to think the very idea of the soul has fallen victim to the same sort of fierce individualism that our understanding of life, God and personal salvation suffer from.
What if we don’t each possess “a soul?” What if there is some greater Collective Soul (no, not the nineties garage band) in which we get to take part, but which we never own, so to speak?
And if we’re all participants in the same Collective Soul, what does this mean for the Christian message of salvation?
I grew up hearing that the crux of Christianity lay in the proclamation of faith that would then ensure your passage into an afterlife in communion with God. You effectively protected the fate of “your” eternal soul by doing so, and that your life’s mission beyond this proclamation was to go and get others do to likewise.
But the idea of a single, Collective Soul blows up this entire concept of personal salvation. There’s no longer a possibility of individual salvation while others still suffer. Now, for some this might mean that the entire world has to be converted to Christianity before we can be truly reconciled with God. But I tend to think, based on Jesus’ life and teaching, that it has more to do with lifting one another up and making ourselves collectively whole by working together toward the eradication of suffering, be it physical, emotional or spiritual.
This also re-frames the idea of the phrase “Thy Kingdom come” in the so-called Lord’s Prayer. Whereas some consider this a plea to God to bring some sort of yet-to-be experienced kingdom here to earth, what if it’s meant to be a pledge from us to God? What if it’s we who are responsible for invoking God’s kingdom, by living as if there truly is no man, woman, slave, free, Muslim, Jew, gay, straight, Republican or Democrat?’
The responsibility for “God’s Kingdom come” then is on us. Rather than waiting on God to act, we bear the burden for making real the perfectly complete love of which Jesus spoke. In doing so, it’s hard to imagine that I could sit back and consider my own personal salvation, however you interpret that, while others still suffer.
After all, their life is also my life.
Their soul is also my soul.
Their salvation is also my salvation.
To make any other distinction is to place “self” above “other” and thus take a step back from fully realizing the vision glimpsed in Jesus’ life and ministry. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s about us.
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Christian Piatt is an author, editor, speaker, musician and spoken word artist. He co-founded Milagro Christian Church in Pueblo, Colorado with his wife, Rev. Amy Piatt, in 2004. He is the creator and editor of BANNED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BIBLE and BANNED QUESTIONS ABOUT JESUS. Christian has a memoir on faith, family and parenting being published in early 2012 called PREGMANCY: A Dad, a Little Dude and a Due Date.Visit www.christianpiatt.com, or find him on Twitter or Facebook.
