Evangelical No More?: Personal Conversion

As was stated in my last post, I want to say a few things about the four major tenants of evangelicalism. My intention is not to deconstruct evangelicalism. It is however my hope to show that the questions that evangelicalism sought to answer, the issues it sought to address, and the context in which it was developed may in fact be a greater hindrance to itself in these days should we continue to persist in our emphasis' and what we think it looks like to be a Christian.
 
Let me begin by saying that the reason I found myself within evangelicalism has to do with my own personal conversion. It was immediate and it was powerful. It was a moment in which Jesus revealed himself to me and I was swept up in a holy embrace with God. I've never felt anything like it. I could no more deny my own "born again" experience then I could deny myself.

In evangelicalism, my experience (or a similar one) is necessary for proper admittance into the Christian fold. Without it, a person who calls themselves a Christian and yet has not had a "born again" experience will be said to have a "weak testimony", and people will be suspicious as to the authenticity of their faith.

A girl in the youth group I once pastored stated that while she was attending a Christian school in Lancaster County she was given an assignment to write out her "testimony" and then present it to the class the following day. This poor girl didn't have a definitive moment of responding to an alter call or praying the "sinners prayer" or weeping for hours (like I did). She went up front and delivered one of the most insightful and profound things that I think anyone at any age could have expressed in that moment (let alone someone in elementary school).

I trust Jesus with my heart everyday... there was no one moment when I did that. I've always done that.

 The teacher responded by saying:

Well that's because you and your family go to an Episcopal church.

Because this girl did not have a bonafide "born again" experience, the legitimacy of her faith was called into question.

As I've worked through my soteriology in post after post after post after post (and perhaps not always as well as I could have), I've come to a few new convictions (new to me, not new to the Christian faith). Describing these convictions in thorough detail would be a post for another time, so I will try to be as brief as I can without being ambiguous and unclear.

I think that it may very well be that the question of personal salvation is the wrong question or focal point. I think it marginalizes many of the other aspects of the Christian faith and life.

 If conversion is the means in which one enters the fold, then everything else such as discipleship, baptism, the Eucharist, etc. are all secondary. Making them secondary, I fear, has by virtue rendered them unimportant.

By rendering these unimportant in our stance has in some ways robbed us of the fullness of the Christian faith. It is for this reason that I believe we have a multitude of weak Christians, myself included, being that I have never had intentional, personal discipleship.

This focal point on personal salvation seems to be a relatively new phenomenon, which I discuss more in this post.

If you look at the conversion of St. Augustine, you will find that it was after he was a chatechumen that he received baptism, at which time he would have received his first communion. Only then did he "become a Christian" (at least in the sense that I am speaking of it here). I am not pointing out Augustine's experience as a better or superior pattern to follow, it is only to say that the evangelical mode is not the only one out there.

Perhaps I do this all too infrequently in some of my posts, but I'm going to defer to the bible for some further consideration. If you're like me you would think or assume that the biblical writers would speak of discipleship as what takes place (or at least should take place) after one has an immediate conversion moment. But consider that in John's gospel, when Jesus states to his audience that they must eat of his flesh and drink of his blood (a pre-reference to Communion), John records that:

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him (emphasis added). Jn. 6:66

Pause to reflect on this for a moment. Is that not what we call ourselves today; disciples, (followers) of Jesus? Is there anyone who would call themselves a follower of Jesus and yet not a Christian (besides people like Richard Dawkins, haha!)?

This is why I think that the process of catechism similar to what St. Augustine underwent (that is, teaching people for a duration of time what all is involved with following Jesus) is akin to biblical discipleship.

 A case could be made that biblical discipleship does not equal the sealing of one’s soul. Or, to put it in another way, learning what it means to follow Jesus into this world and the cost that is associated with it does not mean that a person is “saved.” This is why I believe the gospel to be far more than a personal exchange between us and God for the security of our eternal locations. For a fuller understanding of why I think this way, read this  post on some “New Perspective On Paul” type stuff.

All this to say, the bottom line is that the emphasis on conversion has caused us to focus on the bottom line. It has made the Christian life a personal matter between us (the individual) and God. Asking "am I saved," or perhaps even more complex and potentially harmful "are you saved" is the wrong question:

Perhaps it would be better for us to say:

I trust that with God's mercy and grace I am being saved (146 Payton - Light From the Christian East)