The Distorted View of Salvation
Many things can distort our view of salvation. One thing that has brought much distortion is the philosophical system called Existentialism, with the view that everything is about the individual and his sovereign choice or lack of it, which is a choice in itself. This is part of every worldly wisdom of today. And individualism is at the very core of everything human today, of its wisdom, of its philosophy, of its psychology: all of it are against God and his truth. They can sound so reasoning with great humbleness, and still, it is only lies they teach. And the thing is that truth is often mixed with falsehood. Most of the time in our lives we are impressed by partly truth and partly falsehood. Very seldom are we impressed by falsehood only. That would be easy to repudiate. But sadly, that is not the case, and we must always be on our guard. Add to this the renewed recovery of Gnosticism today. In early Christianity Gnosticism was a real danger. They talked about salvation, about Christ, about wisdom, about God, but Gnosticism was more of philosophy than of theology. It was only falsehood. It had no true Christ, no true wisdom, no true God. It had no understanding of God’s attributes.
It was a religion of philosophy with idol worship that arose in the second century AD. Its doctrine is difficult to characterize because it varies so, but it is highly dualistic, where all created matter (even the body) is seen as evil while the spiritual is seen as good. The God of the Old Testament is seen as the creator god, the demiurge, who has created this evil physical world. Man is trapped in his physical body, the spirit in him belongs to the real god, Pleroma, or Wisdom (identified as the dying child below). To save man, Pleroma sends a saviour to bring knowledge (gnosis) that will enable the captive human spirit to be enlightened and saved. The so-called Christian Gnostics saw Jesus as the saviour, but since everything physically is evil, he came to the earth in an assumed physical form. Here stood an important battle in the church in the view of Jesus Christ that ended in the confession that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. Gnosis is the knowledge of God’s secret relationship with the world; it is the doctrine of unity with God.
The Gnostics deny providence, they deny the eternal God: “For there was a time when there was nothing; then wanted the god who was not, who was without thought, without sensation, without will, without determination, without suffering, without desire to create the world.” You hear for yourselves what a difference between “the god who was not” and the true God of creation: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The body is something unclean, to suffer is to be in the grips of the demons. Therefore, they cannot stand the incarnation; Christ is an illusion, the crucifixion is an optical illusion. Christ is not a saviour; he is merely a teacher of mysteries.
Oh, how easy it is today to go astray.
I found this writing the other day, it was written when I was 23, so it is thirty years ago. It is very clear how very impressed I was by Kierkegaard, and Philosophy and Psychoanalysis and worldliness. This writing lifts up man’s choice, and the Gnostic belief that there is some kind of true spark of divinity in man. This is Existentialism mingled with Gnosticism, and it contains a grain of truth. Let this elucidate the lies tangled with truths in this world and its so-called wisdom; beware and take warning.
It is a dark night, the air is permeated with a damp and cold evil that spreads and reaches his wafting nostrils, the moon is still bright, the sky is blue-black, the crickets are playing, the dew has settled, and the roar of the nearby waterfall sounds like a howling in the silent night. Dawn is coming, the dawn is lurking. Everything is black, his knees slowly fall to the ground, under the weight of his guilt. A blow to the head and he falls forward, his face buried in the wet, dew-covered grass. He lies still, listening for the fast feet of the destroyer. Silent, just be silent, he thinks quietly in deep despair. Life comes in quick succession before his red-gray closed eyes. He sees life played out before him. He sees all the choices and possibilities, all the betrayals, all the hatred, all the falseness, all his passion for lust and lusting.
Suddenly a door opens before him and inside he sees a great hall. Inside is a large crowd of spectators. A prosecutor, dressed in black, is smirking at him inside. Death and hatred shine from his black eyes.
“Come in,” the black-clad prosecutor shouts.
Fear flows through his impotent and battered body, anxiety about the meeting he is forced to share with the master of death. Where can I run to, he wonders? Where am I going? This fate, why do you abuse me when I am so weak? Why do you threaten a wounded soul? Why do you accuse the wounded soul of the self-accused, the abode of weakness?
In despair he falls again with his face in the wet grass, thoughts swirl, what have I done? Who have I betrayed? Who am I and what am I?
Again, his name is called out by the black-clad prosecutor.
“You who have betrayed yourself, you who are not you, come in, come in. Here, sit here on the blasphemer’s bench. Let the accusation and the sword fall, let it happen. Your life is my life. You are mine, you belong to me alone, and what is mine, I take, without asking, without waiting, you are mine!”
“But where is the judge and my defender? Where is the court, the democratic rights that are mine?”
“You, fool! You have rejected your right, rejected your life, you are useless, fit only to fill the dark pit of Hades. Perhaps death wants to receive you? Death does not ask for your person and value, your greatness or smallness, she only accepts, with joy. Death may have you, for the choice you made was only death’s choice. For in the choice you fled, you still chose. In the choice you fled, you were chosen, death chose you as his. In your flight you were chosen to die. Death's devouring jaws long for your soul, she desires you, and you I will give her. The abode of torment will be your eternity, your future.”
“What is my crime, what deeds have I done in my absence to deserve this fate, this suffering?”
“You have fled the choice, the choice of life, and in the flight, you became mine, mine alone, and while you fled the choice of life, I waited for you. My waiting was patient and hard. But in my waiting, I was not idle. In the contemplation of your fleeting soul, I discovered your weakness. The weakness that I have now for a long time exploited and worked on. In the face of life’s choices, I have told you, when you have stood and weighed, advantages against disadvantages, asked and wondered. The responsibility and the goal, the love and the will, the price and the freedom–you will never reach what you have denied in your mind. The illusion made you wander again in darkness. In moments of doubt I let you escape wealth, again you left the deep waters and again you sought the surface, where again I could catch you. Again and again, you were caught in my net.
The responsibility and the price have made your soul falter and flee the possibility of life in the moment of encounter in this holy now. Doubt has been betrayed by the laziness of wealth. In the depths of pain, I have had to use all my powers to make you forget and flee from this peculiarly dangerous connection. Once again, I have had to lure you out on new wanderings. Woman’s beauty and drunkenness were my victory. Again, you fell into my nets, again you became a prisoner in your flight from the truth. Your realization of the truth, which has slowly tried to pull you out of the grip of shame and death, has been the hardest thing to fight. Where my enemy’s love for you has many times disturbed my light sleep. When voices so beautifully called your name, I have cried all the louder. When someone has taken your hand so lovingly, I have taken your other. In the tug-of-war in which you have almost been torn in two, my enemy has had to let you go in his great love for you, for you had not yet said your yes to him.
Once again, I had you in my hands. The commitment I made to you has been lost on thousands of others, but I shall have you. Death has put a price on your soul, the bargaining for the price was hard, but all my honor was set on your head. The price was dropped every time you reflected on the either/or of life, every time you experienced the sweet kiss of the fountain of life, every time you met the true one.
But each time I won you back, always brutally and strategically, and the price was raised anew. I sowed hatred, envy, bitterness and harshness, I knew your vulnerability, and it would give you into my hands. I would use it to bring you down, so that death would swallow you up once more.
Ever since your childhood I have looked at you with a sneer, thinking, I will remember that. The psychological significance these memories have had for the associative process a single word can create has often been my victory. A single word has made your anger simmer, your lid fall, and you have taken another step towards the precipice and there below I stand waiting.
I will not leave you for long, only to supervise the work in the other places where I do the day’s labour, but soon I will be back. Rest you shall never have. The eternity you carry within you is mine. The eternity the terrible one laid down in your depths I will steal, I will slay it in the eternal fire of death. The eternity you are destined for I will destroy, torment and curse. The step I took to put myself outside the truth, you too will take, for the truth of your life has become multiple, all of which are relative.
When you flee life’s choices, you flee into my arms. When you stand still in the face of life’s choices, you stand and listen to my voice. When you slowly move towards life’s choices, I stand in the way, I lure you away again. New paths, new streets, other squares and new acquaintances. When you cry, I send you happiness, when you laugh and rejoice in your heart, I strike you with misfortune. When the sun shines and you rejoice, I send thunderclouds over you; when you seek rain, I send scorching sun on your shoulders. All so that you will not have time to reflect on the meaning of life or its mysterious origin. When you search in silence for the conditions of life and the answers are whispered into your soul, I send a learned man, who tells you delightful truths. Those truths that are lies and unrighteousness. When you think, when you seek–I give you answers. Your search, your reflection and your experience of an inner voice, that is the only thing I fear. It is the truth that must not reach your heart and be fertilized, the truth that must not be born in you.
Come, young man, come. Death is waiting, the fire is burning, come. Friends are waiting, answers are coming, come, come! What do you fear? What is it that you fear? You have chosen me when you did not choose. You have given me your freedom; it is mine; the freedom you have given me is now my authority. You yourself have given it to me. Come now–death is waiting, I am waiting, everyone is waiting–come!”
Suddenly the black-clad prosecutor is gone. He stands alone, marveling at the experience that has stirred his mind, the chaos, the questions swirling. In his mind, he can hear the little child inside him slowly awakening in an effort, moving slowly and asking.
“Is this the life you want to live, the eternity you want to inhabit, the place you want to own as yours? Is the choice so hard to make, it is yes or no. To believe or not to believe.”
The ambivalence of the experience of the faint voice within him whispering the true words makes him falter. What life has he really lived? What was the choice he had fled? Doubt spreads like black clouds over his soul and he falls down again with his face. The air now permeated with peace and yet so much death and contempt. What is he to think?
“You beautiful young man, why are you crying over this life’s choice, it’s nothing to cry about? Life is short, enjoy it as long as you can. There is much to offer to the enjoyment of life. You have known the pleasure of a woman’s body, the wonderful softness of her body, the glory of her wonderful essence? The erotic mirroring that makes a man a man, through a woman’s devotion to the man who can satisfy her deepest desires, through the capacity of these bodies to unite. Come, thou fair youth, come, I will teach thee the law of love, its arts, its full pleasure, come! Come, enjoy my embrace, come, enjoy my security, come, enjoy my body, rest your weary head on my soft bosom, feel the quiet breaths lull you to sleep. Come, I will heal your wounds, give you love, your body will enjoy the refreshing bath of the female body, come. Come, feel the soft warm breath of rest, the flight is over, come, rest in my arms. Take some wine, savor the smooth scent and taste of the grape, let yourself be slowly intoxicated by its refreshing taste. Come, and know me, come!”
Delusion, fear, where shall I go? There sits the beautiful woman, who with her lovely and tender voice sings so beautifully, inviting me to female pleasure. The struggle in his wounded mind is for the eternity of the soul, where possibility is pitted against the temporal moment of pleasure, against the moment that unites eternity with his.
“Farewell, fair maiden, farewell!”
Suddenly, the beautiful woman is transformed into an evil demon. The beautiful and inviting cries turn into hateful and evil roars. The hateful words give even more life to the dying child who had fallen into a deep sleep after years of oblivion. The little life wakes up from its deep sleep, the sleep of death. Inside, on the inside of life, is a dying child, pure and beautiful, full of love and eternity. Quickly it realizes the gravity of the situation. Quickly it cries out: “Jesus Christ, come Master of life, come with your glory.” Within him, he who is slowly being drawn towards death experiences an inner strength. He believes.
Something is awakened within him. An inner relationship that has been slowly forgotten over the years and has fallen asleep is slowly awakened and gains new life and slowly he lifts his face to heaven. In a vision where a bright light makes him recoil from the figure that lovingly emerges from the heavens, his face beams with love, tears still run down his rosy cheeks, on his forehead, sitting like little scars, blood-red little drops, after the crown of thorns he had to wear, his hands are clearly pierced, he stretches them out towards him and at the same time pronounces his name.
“I have seen your struggle, I have watched it from afar, you have chosen to walk this path and fight the battle alone, you have concealed my name for many years, and I do not force myself on anyone.”
“Why are you crying?”
“From a distance I have watched your struggle, I have mourned you, I have experienced anew the pain of the cross where in watching your struggle I felt denied, where you were tormented, I was tormented, anew I experienced the struggle, the torment, the pain, the suffering and the sorrow. Again, I was clothed in you and suffered again, my love for you suffered in you. Again, I wept for the doubts you have in your heart, wept for the child you once had, the child the Father gave you, the child who was slowly forgotten and left to die. The child who for years has cried out my name, but never received an answer, for you never gave me permission to respond to her anguished cries of pain. Now the child has awakened from her dying sleep, and you answered yes. Now I am here.
Do you want to believe, do you want to take my hand, do you want to leave this borderland of death, do you want to live, must you die and be born again? Do you want to become yourself, through me? You can only become yourself, and that's a gift from God, you can never become someone other than you, although most people try to be someone other than they are, you can become you, you can become yourself in a relationship with yourself, but only through faith. For by believing and saying yes to me, a life is created anew between temporality and eternity, between finitude and infinity, until the day when infinity will again become the abode of eternity for your inner child, for your soul.
But first the connection must be re-established, the memory perfected, time pass, and then the kingdom will come.
If you want to stop running away and let eternity rest in your heart-then believe! Life is not over, the struggle is not over, doubts do not disappear, suffering and distress will still fall upon you, happiness and joy are not yet perfected–but one day, the promise promises, all this is accomplished, until that moment becomes a reality, you will never again be alone or abandoned in either the difficult or glorious moments of life, in suffering and pain I will carry you, in joy and happiness I will rejoice with you. For I take up my abode in your heart and forever I dwell in your heart through the Holy Spirit whom the Father gives through faith. I in you, you in me, that is the offer I can make. To become oneself is to be saved, for since the Creator gave you life, the spirit, the memory, you must receive it and affirm it by faith, for in receiving who you are, in becoming oneself, by faith, you must receive God, and since God is the Creator, who you are is incorporated into Him, into you, through Him, when He takes up residence in you, not sooner, not later.”
Let us understand that this is Existentialism and Gnosticism, it has nothing to do with God or the truth or with Scripture.