More on Being 'Saved'

Attentive readers will recall that I related the other day how the then-latest dead man's relatives assured the bishop and all those present that he would 'go to heaven' (and how I theologically detest that unscriptural phrase!) and we would meet him there, since after all he'd been 'saved', despite never once 'appearing here where we are', as His Eminence had put it, or apparently ever giving much of a hoot about his spiritual life.

So then the other day, Peter and Sharon and I were talking about a recent experience of Peter's, in which a casual encounter with a workman near the house of our driver had led to a long conversation about just this. Apparently there are Two Questions, and two only, that we need to ask: One of them is, Do you know where you're going to be when you die? I don't remember the other one.

Well, it finally dawned on me what the only possible response is, and why this whole thing is so difficult to respond to: I simply don't care. They do, but I don't.

I mean seriously! When I look at myself, I have to recognize that I am truly lost. But when I look at Christ, I dare to hope. Will this tension ever go away? No. So between myself and Christ, there is this life that I'm living, however it is that I manage to live. I don't have anxiety about this at all, though i recognize that I have a lot (I mean, a LOT) of work to do. Saved by faith or not saved by faith it doesn't matter: I have a LOT of work to do.

What impresses and amazes me, though, is the degree to which, at the bottom of this business of 'being savedy' (as they say around here), fear and anxiety seem to be the fundamental motivators. Oh yes, when one gets 'savedy', one's fears are laid to rest, but you no longer live as a human being within the tension. So the point is that you have these tensions, and they need to be laid to rest.

Now there seems to be something bogus about the way they're laid to rest also, but I haven't quite cracked that one yet. I'm sure it will have to with the fact that we pray 'Thy kingdom come' but we really mean 'Let me go to heaven when I die', which is not at alll the same thing. It's not about 'going to heaven', but about the breaking in of the kingdom into this world: 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"!

And a further question is, Why the need, after they're laid to rest, to convert others to being 'savedy'.

I have three catechumens now, and one catechist from Kumi who has been dunning me for answers and materials for three whole days now. I work almost exclusively for this old, chatty, pious Ateso guy named Stephen from Kumi! And I can tell that answering this 'savedy' business is going to be a major part of my life as a missionary educator here. Not to mention the fact that about half of them are Seventh-Day Adventists. Meaning: they are used to worshipping on Saturday, with the Jews, and they believe in an imminent Second Coming ("signs of the times" etc).

A shot across the bow: As NT Wright asks somewhere, if this was really the early Christians' point of view, why did some of them think they might have to be informed of the Messiah's return, by letter? (1Th 5.1-3; 2Th 2.1-3)?

Apparently, tracts and other literature by Jimmy Swaggart are popular here in Uganda. Wasn't he publicly disgraced in America some 20 years ago? Ah well. The First World sends all its unsaleable media trash. Everybody knows. he Third World is where t

On another interesting front, the city is full of posters announcing the latest evangelistic crusade— this time by two Korean gentlemen. So the Koreans are coming to Africa to sell American religion. Interesting, eh?

Well, i realized also that Uganda is for at least half the year anyway, a very, very nice place. Winston Churchill sez: "The Pearl of Africa". And it's true. Problem is, there's nothing to attract tourism except the nice weather. So people come here as missionaries instead.

Ooooh, I hope these thoughts don't get me into too much hot water with the OCMC. But somebody has to be honest about what's going on spiritually and religiously in Uganda, and the fact is, these are the actual bona fide challenges that an Orthodox "missionary" faces here. (Though really I think of myself as an employee of the local diocese more than as a "missionary"— just as I should!)