"What Does It Mean to be Saved?"

 "What does it mean to be saved?" I've been thinking about writing on this topic for the last several days, but was prevented for various reasons. It just didn't seem to be the right time yet.

     I think, in many respects, that this is a better question than "How do you know you're saved?" Or "Are you saved?" Rarely is it ever explained exactly what it is one needs to be saved from. And there is always the past tense involved, as though the action is completed and yet this isn't considered true across the spectrum of Christian theological belief, but only with one set of Biblical interpretation. I tend to like Eastern Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware's response to this question when it is asked of him. I encourage everyone to look into it.

     Assuming I am saved, what was I saved from? The word usually translated as "to save" in Greek can also be rendered "to deliver" and "to rescue," and it is this last word that I believe to be the better translation for our purposes. Have I been rescued? And if so, what was I rescued from?

     My own true conversion experience had nothing to do with theology or accepting a point of theological doctrine. From the time I was a small child, my mother had taken me to whichever church she was attending at the time. I was always stuck in some Sunday School class, much to the chagrin of the SS teachers who didn't want me there. 

     My parents were divorced when I was 6, and after the age of 8 I didn't see my dad again until my mid thirties or so. I had some kind of a behavioral disorder when I was a kid, so I was labeled as hyperactive at the age of five and put on Ritalin, and then Cylert (the actual diagnosis of Asperger's didn't come until I was in my early thirties because it wasn't recognized by the American Psychiatric Association until after I had left High School). I developed an attachment disorder from an emotionally and verbally abusive sister as well. As a child I would become violent when frustrated to the point of attempting to choke peers and even a teacher once (and I was easily frustrated), unable to process my own emotions in real time, had few friends and none that could get close even if they tried, and was trapped at the emotional age of about five or so up until my later teenage years. I would also have severe emotional breakdowns starting from the age of twelve or so which didn't really let up until my early twenties. On top of all of this, I also had a photographic memory, and had a genius level I.Q., but that wasn't a blessing. I was the bad kid. The kid no one wanted to be around. The kid who was always getting paddled, suspended, beat up, made fun of, and laughed at. The kid only his mother would want or defend. And at the time, I had no idea why I was different, why I couldn't make friends, why nothing I did right seemed to help, and why it would always go wrong.

     I had read large portions of the Bible, and would occasionally go through religious phases trying to do the right thing, but it somehow always went wrong. I was baptized in a Bible Fellowship when I was ten, but didn't really understand it. I just wanted to be baptized because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I had attended a private Christian academy in their Special Education class from fifth to eighth grades, but by the time I left eighth grade, I had no friends, and in spite of my intelligence, the only reason why I graduated from Junior High was because of a principal who didn't want me to return the next year. By the time I was fourteen, I had stopped going to church on Sundays altogether. I was emotionally about five or six years old. I had no friends at all. I was at home alone most of the time, and so heavily invested in the fantasy worlds I either made up, read about, or watched that my greatest aspiration in life was to go running in a forest with a pack of wolves.  I stayed home "sick" from school frequently so that I wouldn't have to deal with the people there that didn't want me there anyway, and I didn't want to be around them either.

     I don't remember what started it, but I began to go through another "religious phase" in the second semester of my sophomore year of High School. I started reading a bunch of my mom's religious books again, many of them by Hal Lindsey (don't judge me), and I absconded with my mom's copy of the Living Bible called "The Book," and started reading it again. My mind and heart were so twisted, buried, broken, and shielded that I didn't know which way was up at this time. But I had read the part in Galatians (or was it Romans?) where it talks about God sending the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying out "Abba, Father." I remember it distinctly, because I was sitting up against a chain link fence next to the Horticulture Classroom during a lunch period like I always did. At that moment, I'm not sure how else to explain it except that God and I came to an understanding. He would be my Father, and I would be His son, and that was the end of it. And He was. He took that role in my life from then on. I didn't really know anything about theology, about soteriology, about any of it, and understood less. But God took over that role in my life and everything started to change from that point onwards. Did I still have those disorders? Yep. Was I still emotionally about five or so? Yep. Could I still be violent when frustrated? Yep. But He pushed me, and drove me to start taking steps towards Him, and as I took steps towards Him, I started taking steps away from where and what I had been. I wanted to do what He wanted me to do, no matter what it was, no matter my own limitations.

     What was I rescued from? My own malfunctioning, disordered neurology which continued to make itself known even as I continued to try to do the right thing. But it wasn't all at once, but through a continuous cooperation with God through Jesus Christ. People noticed the difference between when it was me and when it was the Spirit of Christ speaking and acting through me early on, because the difference was night and day. It was obvious that it couldn't have been coming from me. This continued on after I was ordained, and I came to understand what would happen if "I" tried to pastor anyone, or preach any sermon. If it came from my own natural responses and behaviors, it would fail and possibly cause harm. But if I asked Him and surrendered to Him, it was as if my disorders didn't exist at all, because He took control and spoke and acted through me.

     I was rescued from myself, my own malfunctioning psychology, my own malfunctions being more visible and apparent than most, and continued to be in the process of being rescued for the rest of my life as I came to recognize when it was Him and when it was me, and learned to ask Him more and more that it be Him and not me so that "I" wouldn't cause any more harm, but that Jesus Christ would be alive within and through me, and that impossibly for anyone else but God, they might experience Jesus Christ through me.

     Don't cheapen the rescue which God offers to everyone freely by saying that it's just about being forgiven once and done. You have no idea what the power of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ can do.