No such thing as individual salvation

If you really think about the process of being born, it is quite terrifying. It was totally out of my control. I did not choose to be born, the choice was made for me. I did not choose to whom I would be born, or where, or when. I didn’t choose the temperment of my siblings or parents. I did not choose which traumas I would have to endure and which joys I would get to partake growing up. There is a predetermined foundation my life was set upon.

But this does not mean that we are victims, nor does it mean that we are powerless, nor does it mean that God has abandoned us. It is a part of the human condition to be born into a broken world. And it is part of the human vocation to rise above it within ourselves, and our circles of influence, and bring about something better.

This cannot be done alone. We must have the Spirit of God within us to give us the creative energies to bring about the kind of world God envisions. God is the source of both the creative power and vision. We are his co-creators. We are given the vocation of both Adam n the garden and the Second Adam in the New Creation; to name what God is creating, and to cultivate its well-being. This is the Shalom of God, and it is the salvation of all created things.

We are to work out our salvation in fear and trembling because it is in our salvation that creation finds its wholeness. All creation is groaning for our revelation as Daughters and Sons of God. For it is when we find our salvation, and cultivate our vocation that we can name God’s Redeeming work in the world, and cultivate its well-being. This process is like being born.

There is also a sense that our well-being, or Shalom, is wrapped up in the well-being of the gardens we are found. And this is the terrifying part. For if our garden fails, we find ourselves without the ability to sustain ourselves. If our Earth fails, we die. So we have a symbiotic relationship with all of creation. We co-create with God, by naming and cultivating. And when properly cultivated, the garden produces well-being for us.

My neighbor’s salvation from injustice matters to me, not merely because I feel bad for him/her, but because injustice in my world is injustice in OUR world. It poisons the water I drink, fertilizes the earth in which I grow my food, taints the social media I peruse, influences the movies I watch and the stories I read, forms the people who lead my community which my kids will grow up, and teaches the theologies of my pastors. And this is why the Bible speaks very little about an individual salvation. Because individual salvation is tied to a communal and corporate one. My salvation will be yours, and your salvation will be mine, and our salvation will be the Earth’s, and earth’s salvation will be ours.

This is why racism should matter to us, and the rights of the unborn, the immigrant, the freeing of the slaves and trafficked, the well-being of those in poverty and prison, the inclusion of the differently-abled, the elderly, the sick, the terminally ill, the mentally damaged, and the list could go on forever. Their salvation is wrapped up in mine, and my salvation is wrapped up in theirs. If God truly is coming again in the person of Jesus Christ to establish the New Heavens and the New Earth, and if it is true that it is inaugurated in the Kingdom of God, then I must be about, not merely saving souls, but about the holistic salvation of the whole creation, in the small and essential ways that are given to me, including my own spiritual formation.

I did not choose into which brokenness I was born, but I do get to bring God’s salvation to it. I do not get to choose which tragedies I will endure, but I do get the raw material of my own soul to shape. And I shape, with intention and a clear purpose, the kind of person I need to become in order to bring about the vision of God’s New Creation in my small circles of influence.