New Church Life May/Jun 2014 | Page 17

    hell.” I have always seen it that way. The typical Christian also doesn’t see the resurrection as an act “which allowed us once again to have the freedom to choose between good and evil.” But I was taught this. Neither does the “typical Christian” understand that “redemption or salvation is a process, which happens gradually…” That’s how I understood it – or at least I thought I did. No, the “typical Christian” just sees an “angry God” and the “Blood of Jesus” and “instant salvation,” not to mention freedom from “having to obey the law.” This one really puzzles me. Furthermore, the concept of worshiping three separate gods is attributed to the typical Christian, which Mr. Heinrichs calls “an even more grievous falsity” arising from their understanding of the resurrection. I’m sorry, but that simply isn’t true. And it isn’t fair. I’m not sure who Mr. Heinrichs is talking about, but I’m absolutely certain it isn’t me. I’ve heard of people preaching about the “Blood of Jesus” and speaking in tongues and being instantaneously “saved,” but mostly on TV shows or in books, or perhaps in some of the backwoods Pentecostal churches I knew in Southern Indiana and in Oklahoma. But neither I nor any of my friends, family or acquaintances were ever taught to worship three separate gods. In fact, I well remember a Sunday School class when I was a teenager. We were taught to see the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, not as three separate beings, but as the “soul, body and activity of the One God” – oddly enough more or less exactly the way the New Church views the trinity, when it allows itself even to utter the word. I was first introduced to the New Church when I started dating my wife (a lifelong New Church member). I’d always had a close association with “old” churches – Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Disciple of Christ – but I took an immediate liking to the theology of the New Church. I found it refreshing, lucid and bold, open and accepting and extremely well thought out. The idea that the Second Coming had already occurred was, I thought, brilliant. An intellectual enlightenment is so much better than the “Rapture” and bodies rising up out of graves! The whole concept of correspondences is wonderful. And I get to spend all of eternity with my conjugial partner: how cool is that? There are, of course, some aspects of how the New Church does things that I struggle with, but that’s to be expected with any church or church organization. I do pull back, though, when I perceive the New Church referring to the Old Church in ways that are unfair and unflattering. We are not a backward, ignorant bunch who “grasp blindly in the dark” because we haven’t been properly educated or enlightened. Or because we see things too simply. There may indeed be a need to “dispel the darkness and confusion,” as Mr. 225