Work out your own salvation
“Look I’m a Christian and I write for other Christians”. The author responded to me, “I see your responses on all my social media posts and it’s clear you don’t agree with me but I’m not writing for you”. She was right.
There was a time when I was angry. I had stopped going to church and was questing my faith. What I was angry about I couldn’t fully say. Was it that I spent my life believing in something that might not be true? Was it that my church friends had pretty much abandoned me and I felt so isolated? Looking back, I’m still not 100% sure. All I know is that at the time that if you said something I disagreed with on social media I would let you have it. Sometimes thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be so angry all the time, but I would put such thoughts to one side and go back to attacking the people who had different opinions to me. I kept at it until I started to listen to a podcast called Better Than Happy.
It’s odd a podcast like Better Than Happy would help me move from my anger since it’s made by an LDS (Church of Latter-Day Saints) life coach. The coach’s name is Jody Moore, and her tagline is ‘coaching with LDS values’ and while not every episode is about religion, she isn’t afraid of talking about her faith when it seems apocopate to bring it up. I didn’t and still don’t agree with everything she says but I find I can listen to her since she doesn’t thrust her religious views down her audience throat. She seems to have the view that her religion works for her, but it might not work for everyone, and I have no problem with someone who presents their faith as one of the answers not the defendant answer to life’s problems. One episode, in particular, made a great impact and was the starting point for me moving away from my anger.
The episode was entitled Strong Opinions Loosely Held and in it, Jody Moore talked about why we don’t like to get things wrong and why it’s good idea that we might be wrong about something. She said more often than not we place our identity in our beliefs and when we do that, we take things so personally when someone disagrees with us. I think this happens a lot around the subject of religion. When someone expresses a different belief to us, we subconsciously feel threatened and more often than not we react with anger. This applies to believers and non-believers alike. Back then I was almost a non-believer, and I would get so angry whenever I came across someone who had a belief I disagreed with. Jody addressed the subject of religion head-on towards the end of the episode where she accepts that she could be wrong about religion. Her religion being true isn’t an issue for her, what matters is how her religion affects her. For Mrs Moore, she’s a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints because she thinks it enables her to live her best life. Listening to her talk about her faith in such a way was a major a-ha moment for me. I realised I had been dealing with the issue of religion in an unhelpful way. It wasn’t whether something was true or not it was about how it affected me. Was a certain belief enabling me to live my best life or not? Were my thoughts and behaviour bringing me peace? It wasn’t about what other people thought what was true or what was good for them, it was about what worked for me and how it affected me. After giving it much thought, I came to the conclusion that Christianity didn’t bring me peace nor did being angry at Christians or anyone else who has a different belief to me. So, I let it go.
Now I’m not perfect. Sometimes I come across an idea I strongly disagree with and get a bit annoyed. When it happens, I have to remind myself that it’s ok if someone disagrees with me. The world doesn’t revolve around me, so people are free to think differently from me. I may voice my disagreement and they might let me know they have a different view to me, but I’m not going to have a massive fight with them. The fact is I’ve gotten things wrong in the past and I could get things wrong again. It’s possible the claims of Christianity could be true; I’m not convinced by them but not being convinced by something doesn’t mean it’s not true. I could be wrong so it’s important that I remain humble and not put myself in an ex-Christian or non-believer echo chamber.
Philippians 2:22 says, ‘Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling’. Keys words from that verse to me are ‘work’ ‘out’, ‘your’, and ‘salvation’. Far too often people seem to be working out the salvation of others rather than working out their own salvation. Maybe it would be better for us to focus on ourselves more than other people? Maybe instead of asking other people what they believe it would be better if we asked ourselves what we believe and is it enabling us to live our best life? For some people, Christianity is their salvation and for others, it’s not. People are different and different things work for different people. Now someone might accuse me of taking Philippians 2:22 out of context and reading the whole chapter I would say they might be right, but I think focusing more on yourself rather than others is a good way to live. At the end of the day, you can’t change other people, you can only change how you respond to other people. You only have one life to live so live it well.
