God's Apocalyptic Insurrection

Book excerpt: What if our inherited theologies of salvation are distorted by a sinful history that includes white supremacy, slavery, and colonial conquest? What if we perpetuate this distortion by continuing to imagine salvation as a legal transaction by which we are saved by God from divine punishment? If salvation merely rectifies the individual’s standing before God, justice and human flourishing are viewed as peripheral to “the gospel.” This book begins with a bit of “deconstruction.” But the real need is construction or perhaps the discovery of another “soteriological imagination.” To be saved is to be drawn into union with Jesus Messiah, the bringer of the now and future reign of God where all things are rectified. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrected body are the space where a disordered creation is put right. Jesus is God’s “apocalyptic insurrection” against every power that dehumanizes, harms, and destroys human persons. We are saved by the triune God, by God’s gracious acceptance that cannot be earned. But we are saved for participation in the invasion of God’s reign of justice, healing, and transformation. Salvation has everything to do with caring for refugees, resisting systemic racial and other injustices, food for the hungry, and valuing human persons as Christ incognito.