For most of us today, the idea of universal salvation is at best a distant concept unrelated to our lives. Our concerns usually focus on just coping with our daily schedule. We generally don't lose sleep over the state of our soul after death. Most atheists of course totally ignore the question since they don't believe there is an afterlife. The agnostics, theists, and I'd wager a major portion of America, believe if we live the best life we can within our means and circumstances, we trust in the likely goodwill of a loving God to care for us after we've died. We already are or ultimately will be forgiven because we are limited creatures who are always flawed and worthy.
How would our lives be different, though, if we actively embraced the idea of universal salvation? My inspiration for this sermon came from a quote I turned my library upside down looking for but could not find by a Universalist women who lived at least a hundred years ago testifying to the positive uplifting effect of becoming a Universalist. For many early Universalists, embracing the faith was a life transforming event. They abandoned a dour Calvinism which threatened them with eternal punishment from which they may not escape to embrace an unconditionally loving God.
The idea of universal salvation is hardly exclusive to us. Many Christian Protestant sects have been moving toward the idea for a long time. Hell fire and damnation is preached less and less especially here because people will not go to church every Sunday to be threatened. In the commercial jargon that continues to take over our lives, it just doesn't sell.
Some Non-Christian religions also have the idea of universal salvation. Mahayana Buddhists believe that eventually everyone will come around to the wisdom contained in the eight-fold path and find their way to enlightenment. We will be reborn again and again in lives ranging from temporary hell realms, the animal kingdom, human form, to heaven realms until we finally wake up and get it right.
The prophet of the Baha'I faith, Bah'u'llah, puts it this way:
The Islamic peoples of the world most assuredly believe in a hell where the sinners and unbelievers will languish but theologians have discovered a passage in the Qur'an from which they deduce that the punishment will not be forever (11:106-7):
Those who are wretched shall be in the fire
There will be for them Therein (nothing but) the heaving of sighs and sobs:
There will dwell therein For all the time that the heaven and the earth
endure,
except as thy Lord willeth; for thy Lord is the (sure) Accomplisher of what He
Planneth.
Since the heaven and earth do not endure forever, the suffering in hell is likely then to be limited. Also the Lord can will its end when what is planned is accomplished, sort of an escape clause. Thus Allah can remain both good and just.
Given that other world religions also exhibit some support for the idea of universal salvation strengthening our own confidence in this historic doctrine of our faith, I ask again the question, how would our daily lives be different, if we actively embraced the idea of universal salvation?
The traditional objection to the idea that God would save everybody I mentioned last Sunday is that without the fear of punishment, people would have no reason to be good. As we all know, there are times when we must forgo our self-interest for the good of others to do the right thing. This is one of the major lessons of being a parent or serving one's country in war. A critique of the greater freedom of young adults in the "me" generation of the 1980s was their focus on themselves rather than settling down and having a family or being drafted to serve their country. Our society has a big stake in its members letting go of some of their personal freedom for the good of the whole. Without fear as a method of social control, so the thinking goes, people are likely to indulge their passions in destructive ways. Caught up in their passions, they will abandon their concern for others. An extreme example of this might be a crack addict willing to sell their own body, their neighbor's possessions and even their own children for the next fix.
On a deeper level, one possible result of accepting universal salvation is to deprive life of meaning and devalue human existence. You get the same problem in conservative Christian theology which sees confession of faith and baptism as completely redemptive They believe we cannot justify ourselves with God without Jesus interceding for us to soften up the cranky old guy. Once you're baptized in, human existence is just an unpleasant, stuffy waiting room for eternal glory. Why stay here having to cope with these bodies which are constantly breaking down, demanding pleasure fixes, getting into conflicts with the neighbors we should be loving, and generally causing trouble? Better to just check-in now at the Pearly Gates Eternal Life Resort.
On the other hand, there is potentially a lot of good which can come from actively embracing the idea of universal salvation. What a tremendous relief to be accepted and loved for who you are: warts, bad breath, thinning hair, pot belly - the whole package. Whether or not we lose that five pounds, whether or not we are able to pull our lives together, whether or not we are nice to our in-laws, God still is going to love us. Unconditional love, the promise we strive for but never quite seem to be able to practice perfectly to our spouse, siblings, parents or children, is always there, always available.
Embracing this unconditional love and the promise of unconditional salvation can have remarkable effects on people's lives. It can decrease all kinds of fears. Most prominent among them is the fear of death. Most important among them is the fear of life. This universal love can loosen the grip of harmful patterns of behavior. Even though one is acceptable whether one uses an addictive substance or not, the divine embrace decreases the need for the substance to fill the emptiness and anathematize the pain that often comes when one feels unloved.
Feeling this unconditional acceptance can improve one's sense of self-worth. Rather than looking outward for the approval of one's peers, one can find that approval by looking within. There is no need to listen to or to seek out the criticism and judgments of others to feel good about oneself.
On the flip side of this, one can let go of the need to fix and evaluate other people. Certainly one can still offer one's opinion if asked, but I'd say 99% of what passes for useful advice is unwanted and unhelpful - especially from one's close relations who always know what you ought to be doing. Often the best way to be helpful to another is to just listen with a willingness to be moved by our friend's feelings and helping the friend discover the answer which already resides within them.
As one lets go of the need to fix other people, one can expand one's capacity to go beyond just tolerating those who are different to actually accepting them. Accepting those who are different is one of the biggest challenges of life. We all have our limits. For some it is the cut of the clothes or the cuts and tears in the clothes which stand in the way. For others it is the accent and the articulation in the voice. For yet others it is the sense of smell that cause them to back away offended. Accepting the idea that God could look at all people and accept every last one encourages us to push beyond labeling those who are different, "them" and look for the ways they are, "one of us."
The idea that universal salvation has or will be accomplished helps us relax, let go and put things in perspective within the big picture. No one person can save the world nor is it even required of us. Yes, we are all part of a world in desperate need of salvation as many work furiously to destroy it in a million different ways. I remember the clock on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists my father received which had the two hands of the clock poised at three minutes before midnight, before the end of the world by nuclear holocaust. The enduring solutions to the world's problems cannot come from our fears, from our aggression, from our divisions, or from our reluctant self-sacrifice.
When we join together sharing a common love, a common passion for justice, working to end the oppressions arising from fear, positive changes can happen. All that is of great worth is built up from shared love and all that is loathsome is constructed under the hammer of fear. A common love builds up and energizes. A common hate will eventually separate and divide. Unfortunately it's usually a mixture of the two.
Ultimately, in the great work of healing this world, we have an important part to play - but only a part. And at the end of the day we should be able to stand back and put our efforts in the perspective of thousands of years of civilization of which we are just a point on a very, very long timeline. Our inherent worth does not hinge on one success or failure to love. We are already acceptable as we are.
As I speak this, I hear in the back of my head the buzzing of the social crusaders I have known accusing me of letting those apathetic backsliding UU's off the hook. "Most of them could be doing a lot more to make this a better world," they complain. And these voices return us to the beginning of my exploration of what would it mean if we actively embraced the idea of universal salvation, fearing people would abandon concern for others, and indulge their passions in destructive ways.
The resolution of this dilemma is realizing that just knowing about the good news of universal salvation is just not enough. Our son Andy knows he must hold our hand in the parking lot or say please and thank you but hasn't yet figured out why this matters for his own safety and the development of his social relationships. When he sees how these parental rules fit into the bigger picture of his life, he is likely to have what is often called an `ah ha!' experience.
The same is true for the message of universal salvation. We can hear about it, read about it, study it, analyze it, criticize it, evaluate it, but until we have an `ah ha!' experience of it where the message becomes clear, we shall be in danger of abusing the idea. This `ah ha!' experience may just drop on our head, what some call a gift of grace, or it may be cultivated through thousands of different spiritual techniques. These techniques pry open the doors we use to guard our minds from having our perspective on life changed in any way, doors protecting views of ourselves and life often sealed in at the end of our teenage or early young adult years.
The `ah ha!' experience which opens a full embrace of the idea of universal salvation allows one to experience directly and personally unconditional love. The `ah ha!' experience brings with it a sense of peace and satisfaction which can be life changing and transforming. The experience will be transient, but it initiates the receiver into a new awareness of what is possible which continues and begins to shape the direction of the receiver's life. One becomes engaged in helping others and working for a better world not because of some desire for self-glorification but rather from the depth of a formerly unrealized bond of union.
Now I wouldn't hazard a guess about how many of us have actually had such experiences but even if we have, they don't last. And memory can be less than accurate in retaining an experience that doesn't lend itself well to preservation or expression in words. So, if unconditional love is really real as I'm suggesting, what keeps all of us from having this experience all the time? Why is the experience of unconditional love so transient for most of us if we've had it at all?
What stands in the way of unconditional love is our ego, our small self, our complex mental survival power pack which runs on craving, fear and indifference. This mechanism of the mind serves us extremely well to feed us, clothe us, find us shelter and a reproductive partner. Because it defends us so well from threats and helps us get our needs met, one can mistakenly put a lot of trust in this mental construct. The problem with the limited self is that it is quite unreliable, transient, and limited to this body. What collectively lies beyond the self is far richer than the little knapsack of projections we have collected.
To embrace universal salvation does indeed threaten the limited self because it vastly diminishes it's importance in the greater scheme of things. Yes, we can work to help others without needing to prove to God and/or our neighbor we are good people. We can show great devotion without trying to earn our ticket to heaven. To embrace universal salvation is to recognize we are literally so much more than what we think and feel and are part of something supremely vast and unending. The general lack of the `ah ha!' experience of universal salvation testifies to the grip of the ego which usually gets progressively stronger not weaker. It almost seems as if the breaking through of the reality of universal salvation really is a miracle because it is so uncommon.
Thankfully the `ah ha!' experience can be invited through the active embrace of Universalism, not some wacky new-age religion but rather the religious heritage of our forebears over 300 years ago. One of my favorite expressions is that when you take one step toward Allah, Allah takes ten steps toward you. Pretty good odds in my book! Great return on investment for you business types. So it is with universal salvation. By overcoming the ego's resistance taking one step toward universal salvation, the way can opened and the `ah ha!' experience invited. In the unfolding of the way of universal salvation, we have so much to gain, nothing to lose and so much to give away.
Hallelujah, yes, we are already saved! Spread the word brothers and sisters, spread the word!
Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.