The "are you saved" doctrine nearly devastated my journey towards salvation

[heart of peace]

I was raised in a somewhat dysfunctional Orthodox Christian home. While my mother tried to instill the tenets of the faith in me, she was human and weak and sick and she gave up when I was around the age of 7 or 8. That is the time she stopped bringing me to Church. I was crushed, I felt a sense of emptiness and longing for "God's home." When a neighbor girl moved in who happened to attend church, I was so excited when they invited me to come with them because I thought that I'd be going to "God's home" again. This neighbor girl's family was Baptist. Now, up to this point, I loved Christ and had my own childish connection to Him (I had no idea about denominations, doctrine, or anything of that nature. Church was church, there was no difference to me). Anyway, I loved this girl's church, it was fun, kid oriented and I got to read the Bible and talk about God. I was excited and felt I was exactly where I needed to be.

Then the pivotal day came that changed e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g for me in my walk as a Christian. I was quietly taken aside during one of the youth group's meetings by one of the leaders and asked if I have ever accepted Jesus as my personal Savior. I asked her what she meant by that, and she began to explain to me about a prayer where I invite Jesus into my heart and if I have ever prayed this prayer. I cannot tell you how frightened I was (I was probably around the age of 10 or 11). Mind you, I had been baptized an Orthodox Christian (I reveled over those photos), I loved attending Church, I prayed to God all the time when I was alone, I used to feel so special going up to the priest to receive communion (I have some of the most fondest memories on the communion line), and basically loving God as much as my child's heart could in a dysfunctional home. So, when she told me about this prayer, I realized I had never said this prayer. At that moment, I broke out into an internal panic. I thought to myself "Oh no, am I not God's child? All this time, have I not been going to heaven?" I felt confused and angry at how the church my mother took me to failed me since they never told me to say this prayer. In other words, I was a spiritual mess.

It took me about 15 years to recover from that experience. Now I am raising my own child in the Orthodox faith. He has had a very similar start as me (minus the dysfunctional homelife). I believe that my son accepts Christ daily when he tells me to do the sign of the Cross and say grace before we eat, when he gets mad at me if I decide to take a Sunday off from the Divine Liturgy, when he gets excited to receive communion, when he asks me to give him his nightly blessing, when he decides to show me that he has learned to recite some of the Lord's prayer by heart, etc etc. This is all his heart response to God and this is his way of beginning the lifelong Jesus prayer. He does not need a "magical" prayer to say that will suddenly dictate that "he can now count himself as a child of God". Am I understanding the view of a child who is born and raised in the faith and how they come to fully realize that Jesus is Lord and accepts Him as such on his own volition?

 

[ClementofRome]

Such a beautiful narrative....thank you so much for sharing it.

Clem

 

[Lirenel]

Heart-rending. I was raised in churches like your friend's, and believe me it's no easier 'knowing' from the get-go that you can just pray a prayer and be saved. I went through the same thing you did - was I not God's child before I said the prayer? My biggest problem was worrying if I said the prayer right or with enough heart in it that God would accept it.

I'm so glad I found Orthodoxy, and it's stories like yours that reinforce my decision to leave 'once saved-always saved-pray a prayer' Protestantism for the Truth.

 

[heart of peace]

Thanks Lirenel and Clement.

So, if you had to explain how our faith manifests itself in a child who is born and raised in it and how that child gets to the point of professing his/her faith for him/herself at the 'age of accountability', how would you describe it, especially since the first Communion and Chrismation (confirmation) happen at baptism?

 

[Dorothea]

Thank you for sharing your intimate story, MsDahl. I did not grow up in the church or the faith, really, either. I knew about God, Jesus, and a few OT stories, like Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. I learned about the Orthodox Church as an adult, when I decided to start going to the Church when I was around 25.

The asking if you've let Jesus into your heart does sound scary to a child. A child has Him in their hearts. I had a relationship with God growing up in my elementary years that was close and loving, and I had not read the Bible, only been to Sunday school a couple weeks one summer at some Protestant Church, and about 5 times in my youth did I attend an Orthodox Church. I attended one Protestant church while living on base at Rhein Main (It was a mixture to accommodate all service people's Christian beliefs). It's my baptism and chrismation at age 1, that I believe gave me this special relationship with Him, and it was this uniting with Christ and the seal of the Holy Spirit that guided and protected me through my teenaged years and early 20s.

I'm glad that you are back in your faith and are teaching it to your children. I am doing the same. God bless you, MsDahl.

 

[Dorothea]

Thanks Lirenel and Clement.

So, if you had to explain how our faith manifests itself in a child who is born and raised in it and how that child gets to the point of professing his/her faith for him/herself at the 'age of accountability', how would you describe it, especially since the first Communion and Chrismation (confirmation) happen at baptism?

If they are raised in their faith, and taught about Christ, the Trinity, etc., the child already has a relationship with Him, and they would know this since they were taught about their faith since they were small enough to absorb it. Hmmm, I would describe it as when they get older their relationship may grow and change, but they are continually united to Him. I'm not sure how else to put it. Sorry.

 

[Antony in Tx]

I think what I would say about coming to profess one's faith...that it is not that Baptism and Chrismation make one any more of a Child of God than anyone else. It is just that we are doing those things that we know, from Christ's instruction to us, preserved by Holy Tradition, will aid us in theosis and becoming more able to be one with God. We, as Orthodox Christians, do not judge whether someone outside the church is right with God or not; we simply do those things that we have been taught WILL make us right with God. God's love is not conditional, and as such does not require us to do something to merit it. It is our inability to accept it and be comfortable in it that results from our sinful nature. The praxis of Orthodoxy is the way that we are taught by Christ and by Holy Tradition that we can overcome this.

 

[Ignatius21]

The origin of an "age of accountability" and the necessity of making a "credible public profession of faith" really traces back to the early Protestants' reaction against medeival Catholicism where a huge number of people understood very little about Christ except that the sacraments were to somehow convey "grace" to them, to hopefully shorten their time in purgatory. Luther's own realization of this came (according to history anyway) after he climbed up stone steps in Rome with hundreds of other pilgrims on his knees, saying prayers, believing that when he reached the top he'd have a "plenary indulgence" to remit all the sins of himself or some other loved one who'd passed on. He had a sinking feeling that it might not have worked. How could he know?

The whole idea of a "personal relationship" with Jesus was meant to get rid of the gulf between the average Joe Christian and God, which gulf consisted in all the medeival trappings of Catholicism. After all, how could baptism, communion, annointings, good works, penance, and the like have any value if the person doing them just did them out of rote obedience and without any actual faith or trust in Christ? I think it's true to say that superstition played a big role in the religious lives of medeival Joe Peasant churchgoers.

So, going with the sola fide model that it is Christ who saves through faith (i.e. trust) working in love, there had to be some way to "know" that a person actually did have faith. How? The problem is that no matter how you attempt this, the best you can do is take a guess at whether it's real or not. The person professing faith doesn't even know. Given the huge backlash against "works," the "profession of faith" before the congregation became the measuring rod for deciding whether someone was "in." It was the way of admitting people to the sacrament of communion, which still is the justification for barring baptized children from the Supper in most denominations who baptize babies--baptism is a sign of the child belonging to the covenant community, but the supper is only for those who really belong to Christ--note the division between membership in the "visible" vs. "invisible" church. So there's a bit of a division between those church members who commune and those who don't, which the ancient church knew nothing of. I've always thought that Baptists, who withhold both baptism and communion until the profession of faith, are at least more consistent here--and I say that as a Presbyterian.

So the whole "are you saved?" thing is tied in with assurance of salvation. Somehow you are supposed to KNOW that you are saved, which distills to knowing that your faith is real--which kind of comes down to knowing that you really meant it when you professed your faith. Somehow having said a prayer is supposed to ease your mind and give you this assurance. Those Protestants who take the Christian life really seriously and acknowledge a place for works will often say that you can know whether your faith is real by how you live--are you overcoming sins, are you doing more good works than you used to, and the like. OK, fine. So that kind of replaces "salvation by works" to "assurance of salvation by works." That's always been my beef with someone "knowing" they are saved. As a last note, Calvinism backs this all the way up to God's eternal decree to save his elect. So now you don't need to worry about whether your profession was real--or whether you really meant it when you said the prayer--you can now just fret endlessly over whether God chose you or not, which you can't do anything about anyway. And of course, excessive worrying about this is said to reflect a lack of faith in God's ability to save you, meaning your faith may not be real, meaning you may not be elect, meaning you may very well be screwed. I still fail to see how any assurance can come from that.

I can really see where that question would cause angst for someone who really takes faith seriously. Many people in different evangelical circles always "rededicate" themselves to Christ, because their last profession may not really have been solid.

And finally, remember that in the eyes of most Protestants, children are born into the world as rebellious sinners under the condemnation of a wrathful, holy, just God. The task of parents, with the help of the church, is to evangelize these children as though they're pagans--after all, until they make that profession, and even if they're baptized--they may not really be Christians. So you have to pull them aside and ask them if they've made Jesus their personal Lord 'n Savior--and if they really meant it.

Seems Orthodoxy, by not seeing children as born into condemnation and total spiritual deadness, doesn't have such a compelling need to steer them to the big event of professing their faith in front of a congregation so that people will at least be confident enough to let them take communion.

 

[ClementofRome]

wturri....that entire post is quotable!

Clem

 

[gzt]

And, really, until recently, it was acknowledged in these sorts of Protestant circles that a child raised as a Christian may never have a big pivotal turning point and conversion experience, but rather they will always have believed. They never need to appropriate it and make it their own because they've always had faith. They would then simply be baptized when they are old enough to take it.

Anyway, one of the reasons I'm Orthodox is infant baptism and communion, the pair of them. Life is just incomprehensible without them.

 

[Ignatius21]

And, really, until recently, it was acknowledged in these sorts of Protestant circles that a child raised as a Christian may never have a big pivotal turning point and conversion experience, but rather they will always have believed. They never need to appropriate it and make it their own because they've always had faith. They would then simply be baptized when they are old enough to take it.

Anyway, one of the reasons I'm Orthodox is infant baptism and communion, the pair of them. Life is just incomprehensible without them.

You make a good point. The "moment of conversion" or "decision point" stuff did generally come much later and was a keystone of revivalism, which has since pretty much infected every corner of Protestantism. Even much more traditional Protestant groups still often over-emphasize this "public profession of faith" as being what really matters. This has much to do with a current fight within Presbyterianism over whether children should receive communion. The prevailing argument is that communion is only for the spiritual growth of Christians, but one can't be considered a Christian until he has professed "personal faith" in Jesus, which effectively renders Baptism of infants meaningless--it means the kid is part of the church, but not really. On the other hand, this position does basically go back to Calvin, although he doesn't have the revivalist mentality of "making decisions for Christ."

 

[Antony in Tx]

You make a good point. The "moment of conversion" or "decision point" stuff did generally come much later and was a keystone of revivalism, which has since pretty much infected every corner of Protestantism. Even much more traditional Protestant groups still often over-emphasize this "public profession of faith" as being what really matters. This has much to do with a current fight within Presbyterianism over whether children should receive communion. The prevailing argument is that communion is only for the spiritual growth of Christians, but one can't be considered a Christian until he has professed "personal faith" in Jesus, which effectively renders Baptism of infants meaningless--it means the kid is part of the church, but not really. On the other hand, this position does basically go back to Calvin, although he doesn't have the revivalist mentality of "making decisions for Christ."

Calvin also said that only "the elect" would be saved. He also professed "limited attonement" which in essence says "Jesus died for OUR sins and OUR price has been paid, but not YOURS". This, in my reckoning and experience in dealing with reformists, amounts to saying that God doesn't love everyone. This typically results in the members of those who fancy themselves among "the elect" in deciding who else will be "elect". I find that premise absolutely revolting, and reason enough alone to reject reformist thinking in its entirety. Too smug and certain, and too judgmental.