Naturally you are very suspicious, believing that the salesman may be trying to scam you.  When he notices your skepticism, the salesman pulls out a thick brochure and hands it to you, saying that it contains the answers to any questions you might have, and that it will explain how he is able to offer you such a fantastic deal.  You take the brochure, expecting to see glossy photographs of the car and a fancy sales pitch, but all you find are pages and pages of dense technical information about the car and even more pages of barely decipherable legalese describing the terms of the deal.  Undeterred, you decide it’s worth investigating further since it does sound like a great deal, so you take a deep breath and turn to page one of the brochure.

But just then, another salesman jumps out from behind the curtain.  He eyes the first salesman warily before he turns your way and says that he too has a wonderful deal for you—for a mere $100,000, he will sell you a brand new, top-of-the-range Ferrari luxury sports car (worth a cool half-million dollars).  You scratch your head, confused.  Doesn’t he mean a Mercedes Benz luxury sports car?  No, it’s definitely a Ferrari, he replies, handing you his brochure.  You ask if there are two cars behind the curtain.  He says no, there’s just one car.  You flick through the first few pages of his brochure, and find it’s exactly the same as the first one you were given.  Now you are really confused.  You tell them that you cannot take their offers seriously if they can’t even agree upon something as fundamental as the make of the car, especially since the brochures are identical and the vehicle is right there, behind the curtain.

Ah, they say, it’s not quite as easy as that.  There’s a large hanger door behind the curtain, and the car is located behind the door which is bolted shut, so they haven’t actually seen the car for themselves.  However, they assure you that they have spent many hours studying the brochure from cover to cover, and they can promise you that the deal is genuine, even if they can’t agree on the exact make and model of the sports car. 

Against your better judgement you decide to give them the benefit of the doubt.  But then a young man walks up and a third salesman jumps out from behind the curtain and intercepts him before he can wander off.  Curious to see what this third salesman has to say, you take a step closer and listen to the conversation.  The young man is being offered the same half-million dollar deal but, to your surprise, you find that he’s not being offered a luxury sports car, but a 50-foot yacht.  You catch a glimpse of the brochure the salesman is passing to the young man and notice that the title is different and the cover is red instead of blue.

You turn back to the first two salesmen and ask them why you should believe that their deal isn’t a scam if none of them can agree on what it is they’re selling.  They nod their heads sympathetically, saying that they can see how you might be finding it all very difficult to follow, but they are adamant that the third salesman has it completely wrong.  They assure you that the deal is definitely for a luxury sports car, and now they insist that it doesn’t really matter what exact model of car it is—either way it’s a wonderful offer that you can’t possibly refuse.

You are being swayed by the persuasiveness of their sales pitch, and they look at you in anticipation as you appear ready to sign along the dotted line.  But then you spot a large group of people walking along the street towards the curtain, and you decide to wait and see what happens when they arrive.  Sure enough, many more salesmen jump out from behind the curtain to greet them.  By now the sales pitch is familiar to you, but from the snippets of conversation you hear, it’s clear that no two salesmen are selling the same thing.  Most of the salesmen are talking about various models of luxury sports cars, but you can hear other salesmen selling boats, trucks, planes, even houses.

By now, you have had enough of this nonsense and confusion, and insist to the two salesmen in front of you that the only way you will agree to sign up for either deal is if you can see the luxury sports car for yourself.  But they shake their heads and tell you that no one is allowed to see the car before they agree to the deal.  They claim that’s not a problem because everything you need to make up your mind about the deal is right there in the brochure.  It is simply unreasonable of you to insist on seeing the vehicle before the deal is made.

But you are still not convinced, so you hand the brochures back to the salesmen and prepare to leave.  Looking very concerned, the first salesman ask you to wait a moment.  He says there is something else you should know before you reject the offer.  In an ominous tone, he tells you that if you decline the deal, masked men will come for you in the middle of the night and drag you away to a locked, windowless cell, where you will be beaten within an inch of your life every day for a whole year.

You burst out laughing, but you quickly realize that the salesman is deadly serious.  You demand to know what sort of insane company would force prospective customers into a taking a deal under threat of such barbaric torture.  The salesman just shrugs, saying that no one is forcing you to take the deal.  When you grow angry, he explains that doesn’t make the rules and that it’s all clearly laid out in the brochure at the bottom of page 42.  Shocked, you protest that you haven’t signed or agreed to anything yet, but the salesman directs you to page 54 of the brochure which explains how, as soon as you approached the curtain, you were irrevocably bound by the rules as laid out in great detail by the legalese at the back of the brochure.

You turn away in utter disbelief and notice a young woman walking by, her attention taken by the iPod in her hand as she searches through her playlist.  As you anticipate, another salesman jumps out from behind the curtain and approaches her, but she is still distracted by her iPod and fails to notice him.  She walks off and vanishes into the distance. 

You turn back to the salesman and ask—even her?

The salesman nods soberly.

#   #   #

If the details of this little tale sound familiar, you are on the right track.  Stay tuned for the next part in this continuing series on the problems with salvation.

I was born and grew up in Britain, where my family were heavily involved with the Methodist Church—a very liberal denomination by American standards—and I continued to attended church services, if somewhat sporadically, after I left home and well on into my twenties.  Although I have always had moments of doubt about Christianity, I didn’t seriously consider the possibility that it may only be the elaborate invention of the human mind until I was in my early thirties, soon after I had arrived in the States.  (The two events are not entirely coincidental.)

Having made several trips to the U.S. before moving here, I was already aware that the Christian community is divided into two camps when it comes to the doctrine of salvation—one that believes you must ask for and receive personal salvation before you can enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and one that believes personal salvation is not essential and that you can get into Heaven as long as you a lead a reasonably decent and honest life, even if you are not a Christian.

That may sound odd to Americans who are only familiar with the very public face of the Religious Right in the U.S., but there are millions of liberal Christians who balk at the thought of billions of non-Christians being destined for eternal damnation when they die.   Many choose to ignore the issue, but those who do study it often end up minimizing the importance of salvation by claiming that “many ways can lead to God.”   And so they gain comfort in believing that even if you are a Jew, a Muslim, or a non-believer, you can still get into Heaven when you die—unless you’ve been a really bad boy, like those archetypal denizens of Hell, Stalin and Hitler.  Thus salvation becomes little more than an optional extra in their eyes—it’s nice to have, but it’s entirely unnecessary.

Obviously, conservative Christians regard this attitude to be a dangerous copout that results in the damnation of millions of souls that could have been saved.  In a way I tend to agree with them.  If Jesus really said “No one comes to the Father except through me.” and if he was correct, then Christians who seek to minimize the importance of salvation are living on dangerous ground.  But having considered the ramifications of the doctrine of salvation for myself, I also find myself rejecting the notion that any deity worthy of praise would ever impose such an illogical and capricious system of rules upon us.

When believers don’t insist on making salvation an all or nothing thing, it isn’t really an issue worth spending much time debating.  But when the act of “being saved” is made an absolute requirement for all those who want to avoid uncountable trillions of years of unimaginable suffering and torment in Hell, it colors the believer’s worldview so much that the impact of this doctrine is felt well beyond the walls of their house of worship, into the political and cultural realm beyond to the point that families are torn apart and religious dogma replaces good government policy.  That is when others need to sit up and take notice, and that is why I have decided to write a series of blog posts about the issue.

I will be examining the various problems with the doctrine of salvation in more detail in future posts in this series, so please stay tuned.