My learning experiences from a relatively new Lutheran faith perspective continue to be not only serendipidous but also life changing.As I discover these faith nuances, I find myself thinking, “why haven’t I grasped this before?”
Carl Florea, an ordained Lutheran minister, has brought to light, for me, a discernment which I can’t believe I’ve not fully fathomed nor embraced in my many years of faith practice.
By the way, the Rev. Florea is not a minister of a church; rather, he is the executive director of a Housing Resource Board in a burb of Seattle. He wrote a newspaper column this week in the religion section that contained this observation:
“More than once I have had well-meaning Christians refer to the work I have been doing as 'social gospel' work, which, though important, just doesn’t carry the same weight as the 'real gospel' of saving souls.”
Up until a year and a half ago, I must admit that this likely would have been one of my own observations. The point this all raises concerns our mostly cultural-based separation of “spiritual things” and “earthly things”. This has been described philosophically as being “dualistic,” perhaps rooted in Greek thought.
Unfortunately, many of these dualistic notions have crept into segments of the Christian church, resulting in many quarters in a higher value being placed on the “spiritual” over the “earthly”.
When our total focus is on “getting people saved”, salvation somehow defines itself as being concerned with only the spirit and the afterlife. How we conduct our lives here and now is of much less importance, because we’re “in the fold” everlastingly.
Florea posits that “this dualism is unknown to the Jesus of the Bible”. He believes that when Jesus spoke of salvation, it was not about souls exclusively, but it was about people and wholeness. It was not primarily about the afterlife and one’s status therein; salvation was about the provision to make us whole right now – connected to and in relationship with God.
That’s as profound as I am able to comprehend. And it means I need to expand my contemplation of what salvation encompasses and impels.
Florea concludes with a quotation by the famous “author unknown”: “The goal of the faithful life is not to flee the material world to embrace the spiritual one, but rather to gain the eyes to see that the spiritual world is known in and through the material one.”
That’s why the Rev. Florea’s congregation is composed of people with shelter needs rather than of people in comfortable pews. If we as Christians could even grasp a portion of this wisdom, the world would see our Savior differently.
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