Pitfalls of Religion: Monopoly of Salvation

I mentioned in my last post the idea of the “monopoly of salvation”, and so I thought this time I’ll give my own thoughts and experience having spent around thirteen years in the ICOC (International Churches of Christ).

When I first studied the bible all those years ago I was amazed at how impacting the bible could be. It really changed my life for the better. Even though I’d believed in God I hadn’t changed in my life previously. Furthermore I was really impacted by the fellowship and camaraderie with fellow Christians in our bible talk on campus.

However, it was from these good things that our views on salvation and the church being the only true church began -perhaps because we got too confident too soon. There were several lines of reasoning that lead us to coming to this issue:

The first one was that we were “doing it”: the evangelising, the daily prayers and bible study, confessing and challenging sin in our lives and discipling. We believed that the Christian religious world had become luke-warm but we were the ones striving to be fired up. (And of course, a lot of the religious world is luke-warm and hypocritical which is why there are so many revivals and new born movements in Christianity). We’d say, “maybe there is some other church out there doing it, but so far we haven’t seen it”.

Another line of reasoning was to look at doctrines and creeds of other churches and use a process of elimination. It would go something like this: “The Catholics teach such and such so they’re wrong, the protestants teach such and such so there wrong, and other churches have extra scripture so their wrongs…” and we would eliminate them all until we were down to us: the only ones “restoring New Testament Christianity in today’s generation.”

The other main line of reasoning was the idea that in each city all disciples/Christians should be united. There should be one church -and this is how the ICOC was structured as it grew. After all, Jesus had prayed for unity.

So, by 2003 it seemed things had gone wrong, and many churches had internal issues to deal with. The “One True Church” belief was questioned and suddenly things weren’t so cut and dried. So, what can we make of it?

In my opinion one thing was that perhaps we took our fellowship, our leadership and the One True Church belief for granted and basically failed to heed the warnings in the bible, or to take it seriously. We assumed we were just “the Kingdom”. From this came more dangerous assumptions:

Because we believed we were the one true church it became implied that salvation was tied to the organisation and leadership. In a sense people would feel secure just be being in the church rather than taking responsibility in following God’s word. This could lead to compromising righteousness and feeling favoured just by being in the group. The adverse affect is of course, when someone leaves the group it is believed they’re leaving God by default, and will lose salvation. (Maybe the person leaving decides this is wrong, but there’s the stigma attached and the stress from the loss of friendships etc…)

Of course, the preaching didn’t go like this. Leaders would preach that “you’re not saved just by being in the ICOC”, but we did believe we were the only true church, so that by implication, that’s the effect a monopoly of salvation will have on people.

This whole experience in my mind has raised some significant issues. Unity is something to be aspired to by Christians, but it’s not hard to see in the Christian world just how splintered things are. But with the exclusiveness of the ICOC in its unity came adverse affects. The enormous pressure of believing everyone outside the group is lost, while everyone in the group is saved. The feelings of loss and heartache when many “fall away”, and sometimes suddenly. The pressures on individuals when they join if family members employ exit counsellors or exert enormous pressure again.

In many ways we felt we were making a stand, but looking back we have to ask ourselves what was “genuine” and what was just politics and the culture of, well, for want of a better word, a cult.

Things that have helped me are some scriptures that I can share. Romans 2:6-11 talks about how we reap what we sow, and “God does not show favouritism”. I believe the ICOC started out with good intentions and biblical ideals, but when things went pear-shaped spiritually (long before 2003) it was a big mistake to just assume we were okay. Also, the warnings in Hebrews 6 about falling away also act as a wake-up call: no one is immune. Being a christian is a long haul both on a personal level and a congregation level.

Furthermore, a church can start out good, but be lead astray. Paul warned the Ephesians in Acts 20:29-30: “Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” -and that’s where the monopoly of salvation is such a powerful and deadly force in church politics.

For me, in the post-ICOC era, I feel a need to just learn more from the bible, strive to take responsibility for my own actions and be more prudent in deciding which fellowship to join. Over a whole lifetime one may be in several different churches at different times. When churches come and go, rise, fall, split and change -how can any one fellowship really hold a monopoly on salvation?