Understanding salvation via Paul, Revelation

And, more to the point, understanding salvation through this sports analogy that I will explain here. The scriptural basis for the analogy are the writings of Paul, and the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse).

Entire churches of faithful, believing and presumably, but not assured, "saved," are chastised as a whole by Paul, with loving charity and concern, but very strong language. Likewise in the Apocalypse John hears the chastisement of entire faithful, believing and presumably, but not assured, churches, "saved bodies of the faithful," before the revelation of the final days commences.

Notice that in no place is a single Christian isolated for correction within an otherwise correct church. Paul criticizes the entire church when SOME of them receive the sacrament of the bread with unworthiness, or worthily but with lack of respect.

If people are "saved," as some Evangelical Protestants attest, while being surrounded by those who commit wrong (yet consider themselves saved too), then Paul, in the abundance of his guidance, would have included at least one example of chastising a hypocrite or one in error within an otherwise worthy church body.

The same is of course true when the Angel of God, through Christ, evaluates and chastises entire faithful churches, at the end.

This is why you must understand salvation as it actually is, as the Bible states in Truth, not in your "auditing," "good deed" and "fire insurance" mindset. The sports analogy will demonstrate this for you.

American baseball is characterized by a dual purpose. It is of course a team sport with the objective of winning. But it is also equally an individual sport where each player accrues statistics of his performance (each and every game) that are his lasting legacy and that travel with him from team to team.

Thus you can have a great player with a great heritage of statistics and honor, even if he never played on a winning team. You can also have winning teams without great individual players. Most avid baseball fans follow individuals and their statistics, often separate from a local team that they actually support.

Salvation is like that, but here we need to fulfill the analogy by describing the disastrous effect that use of steroid and other performance or other addictive drugs have had on the entire sport.

We can and do have an entire era of "high performing individuals" who received their statistics while using immoral and illegal drugs. We also have teams that have won games due to these unethically enhanced individual players.

Suppose you are a great player, but you are on a team that is winning (and thus adds to your statistics) because other people, your team mates, are using performance enhancing drugs. You accumulate valid statistics and play straight (since you do not "use") but you know your team mates "use" and in return your statistics are enhanced because the "users" pull in more win and run and other opportunities for you with their presumably enhanced performance aids.

Salvation, and the possibility of losing your salvation, is exactly like that. If you are a "saved" person among other "saved" persons, but you deviate in any way from the ethics of God, no matter what the reason, the entire body of the "saved," including your own "salvation," is in question.

Don't ask me: read the Bible.

The entire Old Testament demonstrates God addressing and rewarding/punishing the hoard of Israelites as a whole. Presumably not every single person, man woman and child, danced in front of the gold calf while Moses was with God. Yet all are chastised. God does not document in the Bible "except for Moishe, Sarah and Fred, who sat the profane dance out and just watched on the sidelines while silently disapproving." The entire Old Testament validates what I am explaining to you, which is that God does not single out people among the wicked, (or those who are "good" but in error) and give them a salvation "pass" card, even as they eat, live, love and worship with the body that is IN ERROR.

Likewise the Gospel and the other New Testament books demonstrate that even with loving concern, Jesus, Paul, and the other Apostles, chastise entire towns, entire church bodies, entire groups of the "faithful," without once singling out the "good guy" whose rear end is just warming the pews but "is not going along with the error of the rest."

The Bible demonstrates over and over that it is God's will that people are saved, or not, as a GROUP in addition to individually. You all have taken that truth and turned it into the error of competing denominations (destroying Jesus' instructions on unity) rather than understanding that the saved individual must not only strive for continual obedience and purity but also, like a plant, survive or fall with the purity of the presumably "saved" fellow members and community. You can deny it all you want but the Bible is the Bible and God's word is final. You cannot say that God's word is perfect, but then make up scenarios that God did not choose to endorse in the Bible, and instead, God condemns.

Personal story/thoughts re attacks on Catholic church

Just a closing personal recollection to share with you, as I feel I’ve done more than enough blogging for today. I’d do much less but have such a sense of dread and foreboding at the dire condition of religious discourse and the misuse of the word “tolerance” in the world today. For example, Catholics are called intolerant, yet the same accusers would defend any half ass “spiritual system” that drops into a person’s dopey head. Catholics are called “intolerant” for not “allowing” women to be priests, but by the same token by that accusation the critics are basically saying that a faith cannot exist where there is a class of mediators called consecrated priests who must be male. Again, if some half ass New Age spiritual system came along where the only sermon givers could must be gay men, the critics would laud that system and not call it intolerant at all.

Whatever else the critics falsely say about the Catholic Church, they have to admit one thing. The Catholic Church doesn’t sit around writing blogs and documents and books criticizing other faiths. Shouldn’t people think long and hard what THAT means? We don’t make money with pop or “scholarly” books attacking our post Reformation brethren, Muslims, or even New Agers. We keep it focused on the Lord Jesus Christ and God.

So here is the story I want to share with you. The grandfather of one of my sponsored Native American children gave me and my husband a great privilege in the 1980’s. We were able to visit one of his tribe’s kivas, which is their underground place of worship. It was an extremely moving experience, and to this day it remains one of my fondest memories. Now, this tribe believes that their prayer life is an essential component of the survival of the world. In other words, they worry that if they ever die out, that the world will too, because they will be unable to do their native worship of God.

I have enormous respect for this, I relate to it, and I applaud their belief. You don’t find me arguing with them that they need to convert to Christianity. Far from that, I hear the Holy Spirit in his words. It is the sense of responsibility to God, not superstition that motivates this pious man and others like him. His focus is on God, and on their role in continuing to make the world a spiritually worthy place for physical life to continue. I’m not saying to run out and get insurance policies for them, ha, or now proclaim that you have learned a spiritual secret, because there’s no secret to it, as this belief is confessed in classic text books about this tribe. What I am showing you is that “spiritual envy” should not exist in anyone who truly loves God. We came together as colleagues, this medicine man and I. I don’t want to make him a Catholic, and he didn’t want to initiate me into the tribe, but he did pay me a high honor.

It is that attitude that is also behind the Catholic Mass. By that I mean that everyone benefits spiritually from each Catholic Mass celebrated, even if you don’t even know what a Catholic is. The Catholic Mass is the sacramental worship of God. We don’t run out of Mass saying that no one else’s worship is valid. The Catholic Mass is for the benefit of not only all Christians, Catholic or not, but of all people, even those who are infidel, who totally do not believe in God. I’m thrilled when I see packed parking lots at the Baptist church down the street. If people feel moved to have a “home” praise and worship service, more power to them: they are praising and worshipping God. But the Catholic Church, along with the other sacramental churches, such as Orthodox, Anglican and so on, are doing what no one else is doing. They are participating in consecrated sacramental worship of God in the spirit that instructions for consecrated worship was given to the first man, Adam, and throughout the faith history of the Israelites. Why in the world would anyone criticize the Catholic Church for continuing to have consecrated sacramental worship of God that is in the direct footsteps of the original faith as given to Abraham, Moses and their spiritual descendents? Why is there such one sided hostility toward the Catholic Church regarding the structure of their liturgy and the formation of their faith? It is spiritual jealousy and arrogance. I sleep a little better at night knowing these past two decades that I met that medicine man who feels he carries a divine contribution toward the spirituality and indeed survivability of humans, even on behalf of the 99.9 percent of the world who never even heard of their tribe or their beliefs. What kind of person resents the Catholic Church for continuing to celebrate consecrated sacramental worship of God on behalf of everyone for two thousand years, continuing the faith history that existed for even two thousand years before them?

By the fruit you will know the tree. If the fruit is to make a name for oneself, to make money for oneself, or to attempt to erode the faith of a group of people by being hostile to the Catholic Church as a sacred institution, you really have to question how rotten might be that tree, despite their using the sweet name of Jesus.