Redemption

This was originally published on my primary website The Dana Strand Swim Report.

So I am reading this spiritual biography of Johnny Cash and the author makes some comment about Jesus dying for our sins. I don’t remember exactly what he said but it was just a sentence or two of fairly common church language about how Jesus’s death freed us from sin. It wasn’t anything unusual or particularly noteworthy. It was just something anyone who has hung around a church has likely heard before — maybe many times.

I’ll be honest. When I hear this kind of language, it totally falls flat. Phrases like “Jesus loves you and died for your sins,” “Only faith in Jesus can save us from sin,” “Jesus died so you can be free,” or “God sent his son to pay for our sins.” At best these phrases and others like them bore me. I just feel like they are coming from some alternate reality that holds no connection to my personal life experience. What is this sin? Some list of rules etched in the fabric of the cosmos? Who is this God? Some old man in the sky who created the heavens and the earth in some kind of workshop? And why in the world does anyone need to die? That’s kind of gross and barbaric if you ask me (you are probably not asking me). Sometimes the word “ransom” is used. Ok. That’s super weird. Ransom to who? The devil? What is this all about? Is there some kind of gentleman’s agreement between God and the devil requiring the death of the son of the old man in the sky? And this all powerful God is going along with all of this?

As I have been tip toeing my way back to the church, these questions have become a bit of a conundrum for me. When I began reading the gospels a few years ago, Jesus, what he said and who he made himself out to be struck a chord deep within me. Over this past year I have taken a step of faith forward and allowed myself to fully embrace and fall into this mystery. Yet there is this shared language freely expressed among the population of Jesus believers in my culture that I grew up in. When one interacts with this population as a fellow believer, it is expected that you resonate with this language. I do not. It makes me wonder is there something wrong with my beliefs? Is it just the language that bothers me or is it also the doctrines they support? If the latter, am I some kind of heretic? Maybe it’s just a trigger that reminds me of a time when I have been in groups that believed that their beliefs were superior to others causing them to act condescendingly and uncompassionately toward those who had different beliefs. Maybe this language just feels like some secret handshake one needs to perform to pledge allegiance to this group. Clearly this language has deep meaning to many people and echoes the sentiments of many a heart in these communities full of good and loving people.

So I am sitting in bed reading this book and thinking of how distasteful the traditional language of sin and redemption are to me. I’m letting my curiosity just rest with these feelings. I note this odd disconnect: when I close my eyes, breath in and think about the forgiving love of Jesus, I feel a powerful sense of I don’t even know what but it’s good. I decide just to let my mind rest on this feeling as I go to sleep and see if I can come any closer to reconciling what I have to admit is a feeling of being loved with the biblical passages and traditional evangelical language I’m so uneasy with.

I do feel like there is a connection between these two polarities. As I let this feeling of love fall over me, why is it so affective? It’s like it is nursing some rift I feel that exists between who I am and what it is I imagine I should be. This feeling carries a truthful peace and a sublime relief. It’s ok to be just who I am regardless of anything I have done or am doing wrong or will do wrong, I am never condemned and always ok to step forward into a new beginning of grace. We all (or most of us) know what it feels like to fail. We know what it feels like to fall short of our own expectations, the expectations of others and many of us may feel we have not lived up to what the universe (or God or whatever you want to call it) has called us into this world to be. We may wonder if we will ever live up to this or even come close? We may feel like the cards are just stacked up against us and we are somehow setup for failure from the get. This causes us to suffer. We abuse ourselves and treat others around us in less than loving ways. We grasp for pleasure after pleasure and sometimes feel like that pleasure even when we get it, just throws us under the bus.

As I hold space with this love I feel in Jesus, I am connected with what must be redemption. When I open my heart in belief in Jesus, I feel this forgiveness as a sweet, warm love that opens the door letting light through a dark tunnel. To be clear, I’m not constantly moping about and groveling over what a screw up I have been. Some of us may carry on in self loathing more than others, but I really believe everyone has had their moments. Many of us, even if we live fairly happy day to day lives, harbor a few memories and burdens from our past that, upon reflection, reminds us of how we have fallen short.

As I analyze this gap that exists between my visceral feeling reaction to Jesus’s love and forgiveness and my unease with the biblical redemption narrative and the evangelical sound bites often used to convey this message, I do think that one is somehow reflected in the other like trees on the surface of a mountain lake. What occurs to me is that I get stuck when I view these doctrines as solid prose rather than poetry. If I try to imagine a literal Adam and Eve being deceived into sin. If I view sin as a violation of laws carved in stone and accompanied by some legal clause stating that only blood sacrifice will atone for this violation. If I look upon these biblical teachings as literal prose, then I am totally stumped. These things just don’t exist in my personal realm of experience. I can hear some say that doesn’t matter. We are called to have faith and trust in the truth of these teachings. I don’t buy that. There has to be something for that faith to hold on to that is more than words on a page.

However if I read and hear these passages as poetry where there is no requirement that I take everything at face value and I treat them as images to wash over me, then their truth emerges and melds with my personal human experience. Things begin to make sense. The wages of sin are indeed death. Sin: a separation from intimacy with God, not as old man in the sky but as divine source. As we become separate from source, we wither and become bound by illusion which can plunge us into fear. Salvation from this comes from changing our beliefs.

Jesus says many times to “believe in me.” He pronounces that belief is the key to salvation. When I first started to read the bible again, I would get confused wondering “belief in what?! Give me something solid. Give me the three point summary.” I think Jesus is just asking us to believe in his identity as a divine actor who can bridge this separation from source. It is only through our belief that we can receive the gift of forgiveness that has always been there for the taking. Through belief we give ourselves over. We believe because we trust in who Jesus is and we trust because of the love that is there. We transition from a belief in our own depravity to a belief in our redemption. I don’t think this is an ultimatum where belief is demanded of us in order to gain this kingdom of God. It’s just the natural way of things. It’s how redemption works. Our beliefs create our story. Our beliefs define the boundaries of what we are and what we are not. They determine what we allow to flow in and out of our lives. Through Jesus we are restored to a corrected belief of our own goodness.

This is all a deep deep mystery. There are no words or ideas that can clearly reflect “the kingdom of God.” It exists outside of the limits of biology and physics. The best we can ever hope to achieve through language is poetic metaphor. And as humans we must use language. How else can we communicate these feelings? The medium of poetry has the magic of using words and ideas to transcend words and ideas and allow us to feel things that surpass rational thought and connect us to the reality we experience right now. While those words and ideas are crucial in the poem and form a passage way into feeling and experiential resonance with the poem, if one were to read the poem and try to remain within the confines of its language, many poems that we find moving would seem just ridiculous. Poetry has a way of mixing words and ideas that on the surface may appear absurd, but if you let the words wash over you they evoke memory — some shared experience we have with the author at a level deeper than textual description.

Something I find so compelling about the gospels is how Jesus is constantly speaking in a poetic style. His language is often mysterious and indirect to the point of frustrating his audience. I like to think of it as “sideways talk.” He is saying something and then takes this sideways turn where you wonder, “what in the world does that possibly mean and where is he meaning to go?” He is inviting us to take this alternate path. It’s a seemingly round about route that does not follow the shortest distance between point A and point B. He tells Nicodemus that one has to be born again. Born again? What? This baffles Nicodemus who is stuck on the prose and he asks how can he possibly re-enter his mother’s womb? And today we toss the term “born again” around like some kind of trade marked marketing slogan. When Jesus tells his disciples to beware of the yeast of the pharisees, they think he said this because they did not bring bread and Jesus basically says, “Bread? Dude! Did you not see me feed thousands with a few loaves on a couple occasions? There is never not enough bread. Okay? I’m not even talking about bread.” I know certainly for myself that I feel a natural compulsion to read this poetry as prose. It seems like that’s what I “should” do. It’s reading comprehension 101. I feel compelled to take these spiritual teachings literally and then somehow feel like that leads me into territory that is not authentic with who I am and how I relate with what is around me. It’s also just how these teachings are often taught to us in our churches.

I think some may be afraid if they do not embrace these things literally, as if this would cheapen or water down the message. I think that’s probably how I would have felt 30 years ago when I was a master of the traditional evangelical lexicon. Now I feel the opposite. Now I feel like it frees scripture to be what it was intended to be. I feel like it opens the scriptures into a bigger truth and bolder grace than we allow ourselves to imagine. This poetry makes me feel free — like I am participating in a truth and love that is so expansive. The prose feels small and limited. The prose makes scripture seem like a legal document or lifestyle manual finely crafted with a single valid interpretation that is static and rigid that we need to “figure out” and agree upon. So far we have not been very successful with getting believers to agree — like at all…ever — and I just don’t see that changing. Poetry gives it life and a dynamic quality shining grace on who we are today. It may also feel a little risky, scary, and volatile. What if I find myself outside the reservation? Or even scarier perhaps, will it give license to others to leave camp? Can I trust that I will remain true to the spirit of truth? What else can I do? Do I have other options?

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think scripture is one big allegory, fuzzy parable or psychedelic vision quest. There is a story being told here that has legs. There are truths woven throughout our tradition that we can apply to our lives in down to earth ways that can improve our families, work and personal mental health. Where is the line between the poetry that flows through us and the prose that guides us? Sometimes its damn hard to see. Sometimes it feels like the line is moving. I just think there will always be some ambiguity and that is what we will always wrestle with. The beauty of these teachings is that they give themselves to us to be wrestled with. They look us in the eyes and laugh at our confusion and beckon us to fight with them, to struggle and penetrate them perhaps in ways we had not considered before.

So given all of this, what about Jesus’s death and sacrifice? I can hear the story laughing at me already. Egging me on and inviting me on to the wrestling mat. If I were a first century citizen of the Roman empire, be it Jew or gentile, the notion of sacrifice would make a lot more sense than it does to me today. Sacrifice is how both Jews and pagan religious practitioners interacted with the divine. It provided a way of establishing order and making oneself right with God or exercising influence over their surroundings (weather, crops, etc.). Jesus seems to be leading an evolution of human consciousness. He is saying this is going to be the last sacrifice you will ever need. This will make all things right for all time moving forward. You no longer need to follow strict laws, submit atonement offerings for sins or be confined to worshiping in a temple. With this sacrifice that’s all over. You worship in your hearts and you are forgiven always and forever. For a first century individual in this culture, there may have been no better way to communicate this. But what about me and others like myself that find sacrifice gross and unrelatable. Well the poetry here tells me that perhaps we were always forgiven to begin with. Perhaps we never needed the temple. We just needed to be shown the way. The sacrifice for me was not a literal transaction that had to be performed but a demonstration that God was willing to walk in our shoes and endure the worst suffering to show his love and set things right. That all said, I’m not about to claim that I understand the meaning of the crucifixion or that I have any authority to state that I get what really happened. But I’m gonna keep trying. Everyday I am going to meet the crucifixion where I am and wrestle with it.

I realize that there are many who are uncomfortable viewing the teachings in the bible as anything less than absolute, concrete and crystal clear doctrine. I don’t want to claim that a poetic path is the correct one or superior one. We are all different with different predispositions, different personality types and compelled by different patterns of meaning. There are countless individuals who unlike myself see scripture as a body of literature conveying concrete truths that shine a clear light toward a path leading to salvation. They might say the bible says what it says and we just need to read it, believe it, and apply it — any alternate truth is a “false teaching” or out and out lie. I mean this manner of thinking has worked for many for generations. I have known and loved many who subscribe to this view. It has worked for people. I hear stories of people who stumble into Christianity with deep questions and personal brokenness and are transformed by this “straight talk” revealing a tangible path to wholeness.

I personally am not like that. I’m not saying I’m better or “special.” I believe I belong to a growing population that just has a hard time reasoning about with our traditional church language and worldview. I can’t in good conscience tell someone that Jesus died for their sins and by accepting Jesus as “personal lord and savior” they can enjoy eternal life in heaven. While there is a poetry behind that sentence that I find moving and true, to express it as prose is ingenuine for me and I just think immediately loses lots of people. Not because those people are bad or stubborn or deceived by evil but because they really really want to have an experience with something that feels true to them and those words do not feel true. I feel like Jesus offers this beautiful beautiful message and we deny others access to living and receiving that message because we quibble with words. I know there is so much room in the space of redemption. These words are just pointers to something else that is beyond language.

So how do we talk about these things? Because we have to talk about these things. Again I wrestle. I’ve caught myself talking to someone else about my relatively new love for Jesus and feeling compelled to use certain words and phrases and just feeling phony. I then have a yearning to just speak from the heart, which I might add can also be difficult. We are trained not to speak from the heart. We are trained to use arguments and persuasion to prove a point. Somehow I think redemption, pure redemption, is well beyond all of that.

Originally published at https://www.danastrandswimreport.com on May 9, 2022.