Article in Stretton Focus, March 2015
Salvation is an old fashioned religious word that is well past its sell-by date. It carries with it connotations of being saved ‘out of’ this sinful world, and being given a ticket to Paradise. What that Paradise will be like is an open question. Religions have different beliefs on the matter: but whatever it is, it can only be a projection of some worldly fantasy.
Given what we know about the nature of the universe and the origins of life, the concept of salvation as a divine rescue operation, is just incredible. We need a different model. The root meaning of the word salvation is healing leading to wholeness.
Healing is always a process, and wholeness is always an ideal. The process of healing for the human race would be the fulfilling of our potential to become what we have it in us to be. This process can get underway at any time during our life on earth: but the ideal can never be reached. That’s what ideals are for: to act as a lure; to draw us on by stimulating our imagination, and activating our will, to pursue the ideal.
All religions have their ideals, but you have to look hard to find them! They tend to get lost under layers of unnecessary baggage. It’s high time for world religions to make a trip to the theological junk yard, and discard a lot of outdated beliefs, doctrine and creeds.
The concept of salvation is an ideal well worth saving. Not by offering an escape from the world, but in raising hopes of transforming the world from the inside (there is no ‘outside’ anyway!) The process of salvation can be understood as the human spirit relating to, and becoming one with the eternal spirit (or what religions call God.) This can also be understood as the mysterious life-force, or energy field, which ‘permeates and enlivens every fibre of creation’. (Quote from ‘God in the Midst of Change’ by Diarmuid O’Murchu.)
Such a model of salvation (for me at least!) is an exciting ideal, with which to be involved and by which to be inspired: and much to be preferred to looking forward to romping in the Elysian Fields, or walking the golden streets of some Heavenly City.
Donald Horsfield
