The Truth About Salvation

It has been my observation that many people carry, if only in the back of their mind, the question of whether they have measured up and will be okay when they pass from this life. I once sat at the bedside of a dying woman who was terrified of going to hell. I have talked to others who felt they were okay, that they had lived a pretty good life, but they were not 100% certain that they had earned a place in that eternal city with streets paved in gold. The question of salvation is alive and well among believers and nonbelievers alike.

An important facet of near-death research is that it blows the lid off the sin and eternal punishment model. Some who have lived a horrible life report an experience of incredible love and beauty, an indescribable feeling of having come home. They return to their body totally changed.

To me, this strongly suggests that the notion of salvation has nothing to do with the afterlife and everything to do with our present experience. As I said last week, I do not think Jesus was concerned about the afterlife. His focus was on helping people live a happier, freer life while they are on this earth. To him, salvation meant freedom from worry, fear, and the struggle of maintaining a body.

The key to Jesus’ understanding of salvation was recovering the awareness of our unity with God. Recovery, you recall, means we connect with something we already have but have somehow lost. Most NDE’rs describe their experience as having come home. The implication is that they returned to an experience they were having prior to birth.

Salvation, then, is remembering. It is consciously reconnecting with our eternal soul. This is what happens to the one who has a near-death experience. They make a conscious reconnection with the truth of who and what they are. The experience is so profoundly powerful that it changes the entire way they think of and live their life. Fortunately, we do not have to have one of these to be saved from the struggles involved in our earthly experience. Knowing our soul is eternal and naturally exempt from cosmic retribution of any kind, frees us to live each day to its fullest.