I’m often frustrated by the way conservative evangelical Christianity dominates the media. From mid-April to mid-May, Franklin Graham kept appearing on my TV during the national news hour. His primetime ads promised salvation in the midst of COVID hell. So I wrote a response and published it on Medium. You can read my essay on “Selling Salvation during a Pandemic” here.
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
Philippians 2:12
Salvation is forgetting about my incoming email as I run alongside my daughter, my hand barely holding the back of her bike seat, while, together, we learn to let go.
Salvation is the rain-filled clouds parting at the end of a long run, revealing a cobalt sky through the poplars, birches and silver maples.
Salvation is driving by the men’s prison where I teach and seeing it not as walls, barbed-wire fencing and sniper towers, but as the place where Sam, Jose, Jesse, Khabil and Curtis live.
Salvation is writing my way into new understanding; following the silvery, slippery thread of inspiration to words on a page.
Salvation is a glass of ice water on a ninety-degree day; the velvety fur of my German Shepherd’s ears; warm whiskey on a sore throat; clean sheets on the bed; laughing hard enough to cry; the last page of a good book.
Salvation is all that turns me toward the world, not away from it. More than a ticket to paradise, salvation is resurrection for the here and now.
[Feature Image: TMimages PDX]
