i remember when i was a kid... i went to an evening service at the church of a friend of mine, and, lulled by the words of a preacher whose charisma and faith were compelling enough to dispel my enormous doubts about myself, i stayed at the end to talk with someone.
i waited... some religious authority or another walked up to me eventually... and he asked the question they all ask.
are you saved?
i used to think i was, i replied, but now i'm not sure anymore.
so he gave me an analogy... he took a penny and put it in my hand. then, with my hand still sitting open, he plucked it out. then he gave it back to me and told me to close my fist around it. it was pretty much impossible, then, for him to remove the coin.
that's what it's like when you ask jesus into your heart, he told me. it's like that coin, it can't be taken away from you.
and i walked away feeling like i was, somehow, on some plane that i could seldom see, still saved.
it never occurred to me, then, that all you have to do is open your hand again, tip it a little, and the coin falls right out... rolls... falls under a heavy couch, or into a sewer grate, or one of a million other places that can't properly be reached without some gruelling effort. and if someone finds it before you, does that make it theirs?
i think my salvation is under the couch.
i've hidden so much ugly stuff under there, however, that i'm desperately afraid to look anymore. i can't even bear to think, some days, what horrible offense, what gruesome deviation might be lying pressed up against that once shiny copper disk. it breaks my heart.
here's the thing. truth doesn't change.
(this will make sense in a second.)
at first glance, this reality seems to exist in a paradoxical state with the story i have just told. but it doesn't.
because at little as the actual truth changes, perception of truth varies dramatically.
so the question, then, is this:
how reliant is the truth of salvation upon perception?
after all, from a strictly theoretical standpoint, christ died on the cross for the sins of the entire world. so everyone is sinless, as far as the truth goes. but many people, i imagine (thought i have no specific knowledge or experience potent enough to back this up) go to hell. have they not been set free? of course they have. they just haven't accepted it.
how does that work, exactly? after all, a man can believe that the world is flat, but if he chooses to sail from one end to the other, he will still never fall off the edge. and if we choose to live in a world without the knowledge of grace, despite it's existence, why are we so condemned for our faulty thinking?
i have prayed the prayer many times. i have even, on occasion, really felt it might have been heard. so, is the coin still in my hand? is God something that literal, that concrete? have i signed a contract that, even if i fail to fulfill, he can't break? what is the truth? am i saved no matter what i might think about it? because that would be comforting, and it's not like there isn't an abundance of spiritual leaders preaching that very message of irrevocable salvation to the doubtful and insecure. but at the same time, i can't help thinking about a verse i read once about someone being saved and then falling back into the world, and his state being worse the second time around for his lack of faith and conviction.
and that scares me.
i suppose i should take some measure of comfort in that fear, since i am still capable of feeling it, and therefore am not totally indifferent, not totally dead. but a man may be afraid of the dark regardless of his feelings regarding light, and if, in carelessness, he breaks his flashlight, he will, even if he hates flashlights altogether, lament the loss for it's abandoning him once more to his greatest fear.
i have broken so many flashlights. and sometimes, i'm not even so scared of the dark, as long as it makes it's promise to hide me from the things i don't want to see. mostly, i'm afraid of myself. what i think. the fear. the lack of fear.
perception of reality. i wish, just once, it didn't come down to that. that the truth, whole and undeniable, would simply manifest itself in such a way that denial would be impossible.
i bet peter made that same wish.
2 Peter 2:20-21 For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
for it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
if i could paint,