Universalism

It doesn’t mean what you think

I remember sitting down over breakfast with a psychologist friend of mine a few years back shortly after I got fired from my church. I had somehow found my way into the classic dark night of the soul. I was coming off three years working across the hall from a full-on neo-reformed pastor (you know, the John Piper/John MacArthur/Al Mohler brand of TULIP, complementarian, patriarchal Calvinism). My days and nights were plagued with doubts - doubts over just about everything. 

As we sat there in the local diner over sausage, eggs, and toast, my stream-of-consciousness reflections turned to “this Election thing.” (Not the Presidential Election but the Doctrine.) You know, the notion that God in his infinite wisdom chose (elected) a choice remnant before the foundations of the cosmos to enjoy His Glory in all its fullness for all time while the rest of creation, that is, the “non-elect,” would at the same time burn in the righteous fires of eternal hell.

“Ah,” he replied thoughtfully, “you’ve become a universalist.” His tone was dismissive… like our friendship was now in jeopardy.

This is a smart guy. He’s got a doctorate. His reaction stopped me cold.

I got defensive. It was tantamount to writing me off as a heretic. And I know what my people do with heretics. It isn’t pretty. Visit the torture chamber in the Tower of London and you’ll get an idea.

In my tribe, a “universalist” is someone, God forbid, who has begun to think for himself. He’s pushed Jesus over to the shotgun side of the car and taken the wheel back. He has placed himself up here on The Throne, dethroning God. He mistakenly believes that he is the captain of his own soul. He has rejected “biblical authority,” given into the Big Lie, adopted this world system, turned his back on The Church, and wandered off the straight and narrow path into the wilderness of worldliness and relativism. Worst of all, a universalist believes that there will be no final judgment. Everyone can simply do whatever he/she pleases and still go to heaven without any fear of consequence or punishment. (Nero, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao will all be given a pass.)

All of this underscores the pious assumption that we are in mortal danger if we dare think for ourselves. 

Maybe the greatest shakedown perpetrated by fundamentalist religion is the confiscation of human agency. We are told that we must submit to God’s wisdom, the Church’s teaching, and the Bible’s authority over our hearts and minds. We are programmed to be suspicious of our own judgment. We keep our inner thoughts to ourselves. Those thoughts are unworthy, self-centered, untrustworthy, ill-informed, and dubious. We are Totally Depraved.

So… have I, after all, become a universalist?

Are there consequences to our behavioral choices? Of course. Are they eternal? No one knows for sure. No one. If you decide that the church’s binary teaching about heaven and hell does not stand up to intellectual scrutiny - that it is a human construct like any other system of religious belief - does that mean that you have rejected moral standards, codes of ethics, and rules of conduct? Of course not. This sort of uncritical thinking - that morality is the exclusive domain of religion - can not be sustained by any thoughtful person.

On a recent Beach Talk podcast, Betsey, while she became immersed in evangelical culture as an author, speaker, and editor, did not grow up in a fundamentalist home. As a child, she asked her mother if hell was a real place. Her mother replied, “I believe people can suffer hell right here on earth.” 

I do, too. There are consequences. Sometimes dark. Sometimes condemnable.

For many of us, the differentiation between right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and indifference, honor and dishonor are all rooted in our religious tradition. But none of these are the exclusive domain of that tradition. They are, to borrow the phrase, universal. We can call it social evolution. The Christian scriptures are hardly the first to codify laws around fidelity, penalties for harm done, diet, authority, property, hierarchy, rules of the road, and the like.

While my tradition may make an exclusive truth claim, to come to the conclusion that my tradition is just one of many is not treasonous, as some would say. It is plain logic.

To be a universalist simply means that while I value my tradition, I let go of the hubris that makes the arrogant claim that mine is superior to yours.

To be a universalist is to value and respect traditions other than my own. To be a universalist is to prize curiosity. To be a universalist is to welcome and respect the stranger, the foreigner. To be a universalist is to love my neighbor; my enemy even. To be a universalist is to ask, to seek, and to knock on the door. To be a universalist is to recognize and give deference to the needs of others. To be a universalist is to value history in all its fulness: as told by both the victor and the victim. To be a universalist is to give the benefit of the doubt. To be a universalist is to pick up on the scent of bullshit and avoid stepping into it. To be a universalist is to recognize systems of oppression, exploitation, and injustice and call them out. To be a universalist is to be a winsome, participating member of the human race. To be a universalist is to commit to the common good. To be a universalist is to trust myself and my capacity to make honest, good judgments in the company of my community of friends and neighbors. In a word, to be a universalist is to be woke.*

Father Richard Rohr figured this out when he introduced us to the Universal Christ. Jesus was a universalist.

So there you have it. 

I guess I am one after all.

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*My next essay.