We are all
to blame for every sin that has ever been committed, or that will ever be
committed, by anyone. This is the key to
the great liberation that comes with the teachings of Jesus. It is gibberish to speak of an accounting of
sins; it is foolishness to think that our blame amounts to less than a
conceptual eternity of damnation; and it is blasphemy to conceive of God not
desiring our salvation.
This brings
us to the gate of the kingdom of heaven, where we must simultaneously abandon
our hope of earning entry and also assert our hopeful intention of passing
through the entrance. This is the point
at which religion acts for good or ill.
We can stand at the gate and cultivate awe at some one or another concept
of a salvation economy, or we can pass through the gate and leave all behind.
In the
kingdom of heaven it is gibberish to speak of salvation economies, of
theologies, of religions, of conceptions of God. It is foolishness to speak of time or space,
for they comprise only a frame over which we drape our caricature of the
divine. It is foolishness to speak of
being saved once or being saved an infinity of times, or of being saved now or
then or here or there by this means or that—nothing makes sense in the face of
a God before whom, by definition, none of our conceits can stand.
The person
with the best of theologies is, by definition, a damned idolater. Such a person’s state might seem particularly
lamentable, were it not essentially indistinguishable from every other person’s
state. There is only one state of
mankind before God, and one predicament.
We must live, until the moment of our death, as though we had every
cause to believe ourselves the most hopeless of sinners, and also as though we
had every reason to hope for our salvation.
In the kingdom of heaven the two notions are one and the same.
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