sojourner said:
Here's where Luna and I differ. I think that God's love is big enough to make up for even our lack of love. I think God loves you unconditionally, whether you love God, or not. I don't think you have to accept Jesus in order to have been given the gift of salvation. Here's the good news: You don't have to do anything in order to have been saved! That's unconditional grace.
It has to do with the order of things: First comes salvation. Then comes our response to that unconditional grace.
It's your response to that unconditional grace that I think you're really wondering about. For some reason, you can't believe it, or accept it, or get your mind around it, and that troubles you.
Hi Sojourner, I'm curious about how you think what you and I have said differ. Perhaps you mistook my view about kinetic and potential love to mean that I think someone would not be united with God in the afterlife. Not so! I don't know what the afterlife really will be, beyond the promise of being united with God, but for that aspect of 'salvation' I don't think anyone is left out. The worst I can possibly imagine, and this is a metaphor mind you, is you get to the pearly gates and Christ/God/Spirit is there with loving open arms welcoming you in (Hitler, Gandhi, Jeffery Dahmer, and Richard Dawkinsand too) and you still get to choose whether to enter. You might get to review your life with 'clear' eyes, which would be hell enough for most of us. I also believe there is, in the next life, a chance for making ammends for our failures in this life. These are all just my conjectures and musings because we don't know what the next life holds besides the promise of being with God, but, bottom line, Christ did it for all of us whether we choose to recognize it or not.
I would have phrased it that ormiston is 'saved' whether or not be chooses to accept this in this life, but from what he's said I do not think that phrasing is particularly compassionate or meaningful to him. More to the point, if anyone is left unsaved, then none of us are saved. Does this mean we need to go around browbeating people into saying Jesus is my Savior? No way! It means we pass Christ's love along into the world and build the Kingdom here and now, as we wait in expectation for Christ to return and complete the job.
Having said all fo that...
... in this life we still need to choose our salvation, choose our refuge, I think, and this is an important distinction. That's why I asked ormiston about salvation and the Kingdom of God. Hi sanswer suggested that the whole ball of wax is only important in the next life. That's not the view I hold. What we believe, what we choose for our worldview, Who or what we choose as our God and our Savior makes all the difference in how we conduct our lives. As we read, think, and act, as we pray and worship, so are we molded, so is our heart transformed, and so the Kingdom is built. This makes a difference every minute of every day and it is a 'salvation' that only you can leave yourself out of.
peace,
lunamoth