More on Religulous

Here is a final thought on Bill Maher’s Religulous. In the Filter magazine interview he was asked whether agnosticism was the most “honorable” outlook one could take regarding the afterlife, etc. Maher responds by commenting that for Christians, salvation is really a selfish pursuit. He says, “…whenever they start to answer these questions in religion about what happens when you die, it gets bound up with saving your own @%$. Just ask any Christian- it’s about salvation. Ethics and good works run a distant second and third to salvation.”

This is what is what I referred in my earlier post on this as being “irksome.” Maher apparently has no idea what the scope of the Christian Gospel entails. The reaches of the Gospel go far beyond personal personal salvation (though this is certainly central to Jesus’ death and resurrection). The gospel has a cosmic/creational span that includes a righting of all that collapsed under the penalty of sin. The Christian Gospel is the pinnacle of the history of redemption and announces the reversal of the fatal blow humanity and all creation incurred in Genesis 3. Now, granted, some overly simplistic, evangelical emphases has been placed on personal salvation and escapism from the world and whose vision of heaven stops at the intermediate state, failing to see it all the way through to the consummation of Christ's Kingdom. For a good sermon about creation/new creation, click here. Classic Dispensational teaching on the rapture and some millennial understandings have undermined the scriptural teaching of the Kingdom of God, heaven and the implications of resurrection. There is also a detrimental, pervasive Gnostic outlook that views the physical creation as bad and the spirit or spiritual as the only thing of lasting value (I guess Jesus’ physical, bodily resurrection poses a bit of an issue here!). This unfortunate misunderstanding fuels the stereotypes articulated by Mr. Maher and others. It makes the gospel look small and petty, when in reality, Jesus is Lord of all and his death and resurrection signaled the coming of his Kingdom in unspeakable ways. What the finished work of the cross ultimately accomplishes has and will literally shake the universe. As author Nathan Bierma so elegantly describes the “Big Gospel” in his book, Bringing Heaven Down to Earth,

"In a small gospel, God’s main job is to be a missionary
coordinator, and salvation is an insurance policy for hell
avoidance. In a big gospel, God is the maker and manager
of the entire creation and the commissioner of all the
culture making of humans, and he is working toward
the restoration of all of it.

When we live in the hope of a big gospel, we see Jesus Christ
not just as a serial intruder on people’s souls but the one in
whom “all things hold together,” in the words of Colossians 1.
All things- not just people’s hearts but the infrastructure of
nature, culture and relationships. So the hope of a big gospel is
not just going to heaven to be with God, but a vision of the new
earth and the heavenly city as the place where God’s authority
over all of life is made complete. Living in the hope of heaven
means seeing glimpses of such a place already, and wanting
more."

As to Maher’s assertion that ethics and good works are somehow exclusive to God’s people and somehow divorced from the saved, well, I recommend the book of James and any of the Gospels or any of Paul’s epistles- you get the idea. Perhaps if we preached consistently a “Big Gospel,” skeptics may see the glory of his redeeming love more clearly and powerfully.

Those regenerated by the gift of God in Christ Jesus bear fruit in keeping with repentance and love to bring glory to their heavenly Father by doing good deeds and living by the inward ethic of the Holy Spirit.