“Thou mayest be as absolutely assured of the fact, as of the blowing of the wind; but the precise manner how it is done, how the Holy Spirit works this [salvation] in the soul, neither thou nor the wisest of the children of men is able to explain.” John Wesley, The New Birth, II.2
Ultimately, how Jesus saves us is a mystery. Every attempt to explain it is just a metaphor, a story we tell to help us understand a little better that which is impossible to understand. As long as there have been Christians, we have been telling the story of salvation through Christ crucified, and at different times in history different atonement theories have held more or less power over the Christian imagination. While one generation found it very meaningful to believe that God paid the devil a ransom through the blood of Christ, the next generation found that metaphor unhelpful.
I share this with you because we are at a time in history where the predominant metaphor in the American church has lost much of it’s power. Penal Substitution is a hallmark of the evangelical church. It is the belief that Jesus suffered the penalty for humanity’s sins, and that every single human’s sins make them so filthy in the eyes of God that we deserve nothing less than eternal punishment in hell. Thankfully, all it takes is to say a simple prayer of salvation to accept Jesus into your heart, and you are free from hell and guaranteed a spot in heaven. In the evangelical church, this particular belief has led to a tremendous amount of fear (eternal damnation is hella scary!) and therefore emotional manipulation to convert souls. Often coupled with the Calvinist idea of total depravity, humans are given such a low view of self that many are left with the inability to trust themselves. In fact, the heart is considered deceitful, so the only thing you can trust is the teachings of church leaders.
This is not just Christian fundamentalism, the logic is pervasive across much of the American church. It’s effects are becoming so widespread that a new diagnosis is being formed called Religious Trauma Syndrome, with symptoms comparable to complex PTSD.
“Individuals suffering from RTS may be struggling with black and white thinking, irrational beliefs, difficulty trusting oneself, low self-esteem, or feeling indebted to a group of people. Skewed views of sex, discipline, emotional regulation, relationships, and self-expression are usually present in toxic religious environments.” -Restoration Counseling, Seattle
Not the Only Way
It’s time for pastors and worship leaders to equip the church with a different metaphor. How you teach the atonement has a real effect on how people view God and themselves. Penal Substitution perpetuates the idea that we are sinners in the hands of an angry God, that God is dangling us like spiders over a bonfire. Thousands of people are deconstructing their faith because they can no longer honestly believe in this kind of God. What if we gave them a more robust and meaningful, dare I say, biblical view of God. Black Liberation theologians and Feminist theologians and Queer theologians are doing the work, giving us the tools to reclaim powerful, historical atonement theories that challenge the ideas inherent to Penal Substitution. We’re not making up something new here. We’re grounding the full implications of our atonement theory in the premise that God is love, and love cannot be manipulative or vindictive.
I like the way Emma Higgs explains the purpose of the cross: “The meaning of the cross is not a transaction…the meaning of the cross is transformation. When we choose to follow Jesus, we metaphorically die with him and rise to new life. We are changed from the inside out. Sin is still a part of our lives but we are no longer defined by it, but by grace and love (Romans 6). We become agents of God’s Kingdom, which starts now and one day will come in full (1 Corinthians 13:12.” In fact, just go over to Patheos and read her entire article…it says everything I want to say but so much better!
The message of the cross is not punitive but restorative. It sets us free from the power of sin. Christ’s death and resurrection is a victory over the powers of sin and empire. It is God doing what God always promised to do within Israel, unlocking and expanding that promise to include all nations. Christ taking on the Sin of the world on the cross does not necessarily mean he was punished on our behalf, it could very easily mean he was overcoming that Sin because we were incapable of doing so ourselves. Christ’s sacrifice is a medicine for our souls, a therapy that continually heals us and restores within us the good image of God. We can trust our inner voice because Christ has unlocked the Holy Spirit to all of us, convicting us of sin and comforting us all the while. To turn to Christ is not to say a phrase that magically changes your eternal destination. To turn to Christ is to change your mind about him: to trust that he has won the victory through his faithfulness, to trust that he has invited you to taste that victory here and now, and to allow that victory to transform the way you live…as if God’s kingdom was breaking into the world every day.