What Is Salvation Anyway?

In The God We Never Knew, Marcus Borg asks an interesting question about salvation: Is it about the next life or about this life?

He goes into Biblical images of salvation such as bondage and liberation, estrangement and reconciliation, or salvation as enlightenment or forgiveness or experiencing the love of God.

The basic beliefs about salvation that we hear of today are that we get to go to Heaven when we die, if we believe that Jesus died on the cross to give us forgiveness for our sins. That adds a condition; we aren't forgiven for our sins unless we meet a requirement. (So much for grace!) What Borg points out is that we think of salvation as being connected to the idea of an afterlife. Why, after all, should we bother to do good here on earth if there is no reward for it in the afterlife?

If there is really anything to grace, God loves us in spite of our sins and screwups. Knowing God's unconditional love and acceptance is surely salvation, because it is healing and liberating. (I know; I've been there.)

So if you experience this unconditional love, and you are healed and liberated, you will literally be reborn. (I was, anyway.) If resurrection is taken as a dying to the old life and being born into a new one, then we see that in the cross and its aftermath.

And notice that this refers to knowing God. Not knowing about God. Actual experience, an encounter with the Divine, is how you get to know God. Nothing else changes you.

Borg has a lot more to say about salvation. I am branching off at this point.

For a long time, I have believed that salvation was simply knowing that God loves you. And I have been convinced for 27 years that the important thing is to have a relationship with God, not to believe this or that doctrine. I am saved. I have this relationship. I am already in the Kingdom. The afterlife, whatever it is going to be, will only continue what has begun in this life.