Redefining Redemption

Maybe God redeems the world one person at a time, one heart at a time, one square foot at a time.

Maybe redemption is a process that occurs in stages and includes temporary setbacks as well as humble steps forward.

Maybe the redemption of the world is happening every moment, but we don’t see it because we are looking for something else, something more sensational. Maybe we are looking for an apocalyptic big bang or cosmic fireworks instead.

Maybe there is more to redemption than simply enduring what some say is a “sinful” world while hoping to go to heaven.

Maybe redemption is actually here and now—a here and now that opens up to God’s future that is on the way.

Can our concept of redemption itself be redeemed? Can we be redeemed from a narrow, sectarian view of redemption? Or are we stuck? The world keeps moving and changing, and the world doesn’t wait for people who are stuck.

Carl Jung believed that at the bottom of every neurosis there is a type of “stuckness.” Can religion itself become neurotic? Can religion become so stuck or fixated that it results in irrational, neurotic inflexibility, out of touch with reality and the world? We have all met people like this. They are stuck on “Middle C” and have no other notes or melodies to play. We see this in the person who can’t get beyond a divorce that happened twenty years ago, or in an apocalyptic fanatic who knows only the book of Revelation. This happens in religion whenever when it loses its ability to adapt or to re-interpret anything. The theology of neurotic religion resembles a former geological age; it shoots certitudes at people like spit wads, but nothing sticks. People just walk away. We instinctively sense that neurotic religion is for the like-minded who have lost their minds. We instinctively know there is more to God’s music than “Middle C.”

If God is at work in the world, everywhere and every day, then redemption is happening now, not just in some far off future. And if God is a God of love, then we need to see God’s love popping up in all sorts of places and among all sorts of people. If we take God’s redeeming love seriously, we will also take the world seriously. We might even embrace the fact that we are co-workers with God to bring about a new redemption here and now, in this place, at this time—our square foot of space.

--Brad