Houston, We Have a Problem

Trying to figure out the problem God's trying to solve

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

(A six-minute read.)

In his controversial 2011 book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, former evangelical pastor Rob Bell tries to shoot holes in the typical theory of salvation that’s pushed by many Christians.

“Some Christians believe and often repeat,” Bell explains, “that all that matters is whether or not a person is going to heaven. Is that the message? Is that what life is all about? Going somewhere else? If that’s the gospel, the good news—if what Jesus does is get people somewhere else—then the central message of the Christian faith has very little to do with this life other than getting you what you need for the next one.”

And then, in his typically-deprecating way, Bell wonders, “Which of course raises the question: Is that the best God can do?”

Of course, Bell is working from a caricature. I don’t know any Christian who would say that that’s all that matters.

Yet I think he puts his finger on a larger problem that’s worth acknowledging and wrestling with.

Simply put, from my perspective, much of Christianity—especially of the “Bible-believing” variety—has a problem because it’s not clear on what the problem is.

That is, it seems to me that much of Christianity thinks the primary problem God is trying to solve is how to get sinful people the legal right to be in heaven (I think here of a few classic hymns, like “When I Can Read My Title Clear,” by Isaac Watts, or “Is My Name Written There?” by M. A. Kidder).

Again, this is a bit of a caricature itself, and there are variations of this idea, but what they seemingly all boil down to is the idea that the main problem God has on his hands is that we humans are sinners, and he somehow has to figure out how to save us.

So the whole message of the Bible, the whole “gospel” messaging, is an explanation of how God is trying to solve that problem.

I don’t deny that this is a problem God has on his hands, of course. It certainly is.

But what I want to propose is that this is not the main problem God is trying to solve.

Indeed, there’s something much bigger going on.

Sixteenth century problems

I understand how the “how can God save sinners?” problem became the focal point of much Christian reflection. For a large part of church history, Christians were deeply bothered by that pressing concern, feeling plagued by a sense that they weren’t “right” with God.

It’s a natural human anxiety, after all.

And it’s what largely drove the Protestant Reformation—as Luther and Calvin, for example, felt harassed by a guilty conscience and wanted to feel secure in their standing with God (which the Roman Catholic Church was not able to provide).

That’s all well and good and important. It was—and still is—a major need for the human psyche. We need to feel secure in our standing with God. We need to have the assurance that our salvation is achieved.

The challenge is that Luther and Calvin’s concern became the all-encompassing framework by which to understand the Bible. They developed “tunnel vision” when it came to the story of Scripture.

But in so doing, they were, as N. T. Wright has repeatedly pointed out, bringing sixteenth-century questions to a first-century book, turning the part into the whole.

In many ways, it would be like thinking you’ve changed a flat tire simply because you managed to get the lug nuts off. It’s certainly a very important part of the ultimate solution, but doesn’t address the whole problem.

And most Protestant Christians, ever since Luther and Calvin, have followed their lead, maintaining that the “how can sinners be saved?” problem is both the Bible and God’s main concern.

Again, I think it’s an important concern. But I also think one of the reasons why modern Christianity—evangelical Christianity especially—is so ineffective and increasingly irrelevant is because it’s obsessed with and fixated on a small part of the problem (for reasons I’ll perhaps return to in the future).

So what is the main problem God’s trying to solve if not how to “save” sinners?

I could very well be wrong, but I’d propose it’s this (which is the real “story behind the story” I alluded to a few weeks ago): the main problem God’s trying to solve is how he can restore the world and universe to a place of eternal safety, security, and love.

He’s trying to guarantee that sin, oppression, abuse, and trauma will never happen again so that his creatures can all live together in perfect love, peace, harmony, and joy for all eternity.

How this problem ultimately gets resolved is, obviously, a whole other part of the discussion—but, suffice it to say for now, all the typical Reformation concerns about atonement, forgiveness, salvation, etc., are certainly part of the resolution and don’t need to be discarded.

But, again, they’re not the entirety of the resolution because they’re only designed to address one facet of the problem.

I know such sentiment will get me kicked out of the “gospel club” by some Christians—though I’d say it’s a pretty narrow slice who’ve, unfortunately, put “Reformed” blinders on and have failed to see the bigger picture (thinking, I guess, that Calvin, for one, not only came up with all the answers, but also asked all the questions that needed to be asked).

But that’s OK. I rejoice that such people aren’t the judges as to who is or who isn’t an “orthodox” Christian.

I know I won’t be ingratiating myself to that crowd by quoting another “heretic” along these lines, but I really appreciate how William Ellery Channing, a Congregationalist-turned-Unitarian minister, put it in the early nineteenth century:

Whilst we gratefully acknowledge, that [Christ] came to rescue us from punishment, we believe, that he was sent on a still nobler errand, namely, to deliver us from sin itself, and to form us to a sublime and heavenly virtue. . . . Without this, pardon, were it possible, would be of little value. Why pluck the sinner from hell, if a hell be left to burn in his own breast? Why raise him to heaven, if he remain a stranger to its sanctity and love?

In other words, God has a bigger problem he’s trying to solve—that of returning the universe to complete harmony, peace, and safety. But he can’t accomplish that by bringing people to heaven whose hearts are full of hell—those who remain “a stranger” to heaven’s “sanctity and love.”

This is, by the way, essentially what Paul addresses in Romans 3, where he notes that, in God’s great salvation-plan, he had to somehow be both “just” and yet “the justifier” of sinners. In other words, he had to figure out a way to both forgive sinners and yet not immortalize sin—which would permanently jeopardize the safety of the universe—in the process.

As I said, how that all gets worked out is another part of the story.

But, again, that part of the story only makes sense insofar as it’s placed within the framework of the larger story, and the bigger problem God’s trying to solve.

Much more could be said along these lines of course—and perhaps more will be said in the future. But I’ll leave it at that for now!

The bottom line: as I understand it, God is not myopically focused on getting us “saved.” That’s not his main—and certainly not only—concern. For sure: he desperately wants to save us. But not at the expense of the eternal wellbeing of the entire universe.

So that’s the great problem and dilemma he’s trying to resolve.

How that gets worked out is a conversation for another day.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.