Christianity Isn't an Exit Strategy

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John's Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today's edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. This week I came across a video of retired Anglican Bishop and renowned New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, and he was making a point that I think is worth sitting with: that Christianity is not primarily about your soul escaping this world and going to heaven when you die. Now, I know that might sound strange. For a lot of people, your soul going to heaven is Christianity. The whole point. Get saved, go to heaven. And that assumption runs so deep that most of us never think to question it. It's like being a fish in water. You don't notice the water. That means it’s definitely a myth worth breaking. I was reminded of just how deep that assumption runs when I was watching an old episode of Lost the other night. The subject of baptism came up, and John Locke explained to Claire that baptism was basically eternal insurance. A way to make sure the baby got to heaven if something happened to him. And when Claire later talked to Mr. Eko, the character who, theoretically, had the most Christian formation of anyone on the island, he didn't push back on that understanding at all. When she worried about being separated from Aaron, he essentially offered to baptize them both. An insurance double plan, apparently. Now, I don't want to be too hard on a television show. But that scene captures something real. It's the version of Christianity that enormous numbers of people have actually received. Baptism as a ticket. Salvation as an exit strategy. The point of faith is to get your soul safely out of this world and into the next one. But here's the thing: that's not what Scripture actually teaches. Wright points to the Lord's Prayer as a window into the heart of what Jesus was actually about. Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say, "Our Father, may our souls ascend to you in heaven." He says, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The direction of movement, if you want to put it that way, is not souls leaving earth for heaven. It's God's reign arriving here in our broken, beloved world. The healing of creation. The renewal of all things. This is why the resurrection matters so much. Jesus did not rise as a disembodied spirit finally freed from the physical world. He rose bodily, as the first fruits of a new creation. The great promise of Scripture is not that God will eventually discard the physical world and take faithful souls somewhere else. It's that God will renew, restore, and redeem this world. And that changes everything about what the Christian life is for. If salvation is an exit strategy, then your job is just to get yourself and maybe a few others safely through the door before things get worse. But if salvation is about God's kingdom coming, then you are called to be part of that renewal right now. To practice justice. To love your neighbor. To work for the healing of what is broken. Not because it earns you anything, but because that is what it looks like to live in the reality Jesus announced. Baptism, in this fuller picture, is not insurance. It's initiation into a people who are learning to live as if the kingdom is already breaking in. Because it is. So the next time someone asks what Christianity is really about, you might resist the urge to reach for the heaven-and-hell framework. Instead, try this: it's about a God who loves this world so much that he entered into it, and who is committed to setting it right and healing all things—a God who invites us to be part of that work. Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.