Soteriology
The Story of Salvation
John 3 & 8; Mark 2 & 9
If Jesus’ death saves us from something… from what?
If Jesus’ resurrection saves us for something… how?
What do we imagine is the relationship between our brain’s perception of God now and after death?
Christ is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.
original icon by Besty Porter, used with artist permission
What do we imagine…
Jesus’s death saves us from? What are we being saved for? And how does it happen?
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3)
By refusing to punish anyone, Jesus is correcting our misperception that God is a threat to sinners. The notion of the incarnation is that Jesus is God in a body—God has come near to say, “This is who I am,” and restore our trust face-to-face.
If we take seriously the incarnation, then we are not permitted to answer to the question, “Saved from what?” by saying, “Well, from God,” because Jesus was not a threat to sinners. Jesus forgave without conditions. We find no mention of Jesus demanding punishment, death, or sacrifice in exchange for forgiveness.
When he encounters the paralyzed man, Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2). No one else’s legs had to be broken in the man’s place; forgiveness was freely given. In fact the verb is past tense; we might understand Jesus to be suggesting, “Son, your sins are already forgiven.”
“‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” (Mark 2)
And it would seem those present understood the message; the scandal of that moment was that Jesus was forgiving sins at all—an act reserved for God.
So we might understand the story of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection to be:
1) Revealing something about Jesus:
Jesus is God.
2) Revealing something about God:
God is nonviolent and nonpunishing.
3) Revealing something about sin:
Sin has always, already been forgiven.
4) Revealing something about us:
We are the ones who mistakenly believe sin has to be punished.
But where did we get the notion that sin has to be punished in the first place? This question might float us back to the original lie in the garden of Eden, and the moment that the serpent first introduced the suggestion that “God can’t be trusted.” As the story goes, the original couple suffered a crisis of trust, and then feared punishment from God—a punishment that God did not in fact inflict. Therefore, whenever we continue to misperceive God as punishing, is it possible we are still suffering that original crisis of trust?
“… and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8)
We might understand salvation as the process by which we come to perceive accurately the difference between that which is trustworthy and that which is not. When our brain perceives God as trustworthy, this will spark a release of neurotransmitters that soothe our nervous system and permit us access to the upper networks in our brain, regardless of our circumstances. Our stress feels more manageable, and we may experience ourselves as being saved from the hell of mistrust and the violence we tend to inflict on ourselves, others, and the planet when we’re functioning in that neurobiological state of “too high” stress.
“… it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell.” (Mark 9)
Jesus is recorded as cautioning us against “hell,” eternal “punishment,” or “torment.” What if the distinction between heaven and hell lies in our brain’s perception of whether God is a threat or whether God is trustworthy? Could a brain prone to mistrust and misperception in this life remain so also after death?
As the story goes, three days after Jesus was crucified, he appeared again in bodily form—with scars. Jesus’s resurrected body had not been perfected so to speak. If we too are resurrected in bodily form, is it possible that the way in which our brain learns to perceive or misperceives God—and experience either forgiveness or feared punishment—prior to death has some impact on how we will experience reality after death?
This is the possibility I understand theologian C. S. Lewis to have been contemplating when he wrote:
“The Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.”
If it is true that what distinguishes hell from heaven is our brain’s capacity to perceive accurately God’s trustworthiness and respond with trust, which dials down our stress and bodily torment, then might salvation involve some neurobiological rewiring?
Could we understand salvation as the process of neural rewiring which follows a correction of our misperceptions about ourselves, others, sin, and God? If so, then the neurobiological phenomenon of trust seems the key to unlocking that capacity within us. And God coming near, in a body like ours, entering our human story of scapegoating and the “Triangle of Punishment” to show us the way out through forgiveness may have been the only conceivable way in which we could possible have been saved.
∞
In reflecting on Jesus’ death
we came to understand God is not a threat,
but rather, we were always, already forgiven.
This revelation decreased our stress
and restored our trust.
In reflecting on Jesus’ resurrection
we also came to understand that life extends beyond death.
This increased our trust further,
allowing us to imagine forgiving our own enemies,
even at the risk of our own death.
As we understood what this story revealed
we found ourselves being led out of the Triangle of Punishment
and saved as our trust in God was restored
in this life
and in the life to come.
Listening with you,
Questions for reflection:
When you consider the “Triangle of Punishment” where do you recognize yourself?
What words would you use to describe the image of God reflected in the story of Jesus?
How does your body respond to the notion of God as nonviolent, nonpunishing, freely forgiving?
Further reading:
John 3:17, Mark 2: 5–7, John 8:32, Mark 9:47
Sermons & homilies: What Does It Mean to be Saved?
The Brain & the Spirit, Chapter 5, A Healing Story, “Saved from What?,” pp. 107–114; “A Transformative Story,” pp. 114–118; “The Story of Salvation,” p. 118.
