godwho's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- She's safe!... Or is she? My aunt is in the hospital right now, teetering on the edge of life and death. She's not extremely elderly, though she is a few years my mother's senior. She has had a decidedly more difficult life than my mom, however, and the years have worn on her. My grandmother was saved as a young adult when a good friend shared the gospel with her. My grandfather was not at all interested for many years. The girls, Mom and my aunt, usually went to church with Grandma. So, though my aunt didn't start out as young as I did, to all intents and purposes, she did "grow up in church." First of all, I have to point out that the denonimation to which my grandma, aunt, and mom all belong doesn't use the word "saved." For whatever reason, it's almost like a dirty word. Maybe it sounds too Baptist, or too Evangelical. Both of those are dirty words, as well. And don't even get me started on Pentecostal. But I digress. "Baptized" is synonymous with "saved" in this denomination, and baptism is a prerequisite of salvation in its doctrine. My understanding of the scriptures is that baptism is absolutely necessary as an act (and should be one of the first acts) of obedience by a saved person. Their view is that one is not saved until the baptism has occured. Regardless of semantics, my grandma, later my grandpa, my aunt, and my mother all "have been baptized" in their lingo, or "are saved" in mine. It's interesting to note the tragectories of the sisters' lives. They diverged somewhere, and whereas my mother went to a Christian college, became a teacher, got married, had a family, and walked the straight and narrow (though she had some stuff slung at her, to be sure), my aunt had a much tougher road. She got married quite young to a man five years her junior, tried for years to have kids before she finally produced three in her thirties, quit a well-paying job to be home with the kids, was devistated when her husband left her for a neighbor, had a nervous breakdown, engaged in some dangerous (and illegal) activities, and ended up with HIV as a souvenir. In recent years, my aunt's mental state has slowly deteriorated. Interesting quirks of her personality have magnified to become gross charactures of her former self. Whereas in the past she would have shown concern for my husband reprimanding (rightly, I should point out) her grandchild, now she shakes with fury and yells at him for an hour without losing any steam. Before, a news story about a mom killing her kids would have upset her; now, she spends all day driving to different religious authorities' homes, intent on discovering how a loving God could allow this kind of thing to happen. Her "conversation" is a loop of comments about her weight, her lack of computer skills, and her love of liver and onions. Throughout all of this, however, her heart has remained the same. My child has always adored my aunt. Although her behavior seems aberrant to me, her childish approach to the world has caused her to be a favorite of children who know her. Kids and animals flock to my aunt. Her daughter remarked to me, "They can just tell... They have a sense of who's good." I think she's right. I say all of this simply because I think it's interesting background. The point is that the other day, I was talking with my mother (who has obviously been quite concerned about her sister), and said, "I was thinking about how she used to say she thought heaven sounded a little boring, what with the constant singing. Not to be morbid, but when it looked like she was going to go, I thought, 'Oh, man, she's about to "get it." In an instant, she could be in the presence of God, and I know she'd be aghast, looking around, saying, "Ah! So THIS is it... Wow! This is nothing like I pictured it."'" When I told my mom that her reaction was not what I'd expected. She said, "Yes. I *think* she'll be there. She thinks about God a lot, and going to church continues to be important to her." I wanted to claw something! Now, I have skimmed the Bible a couple of times and, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think "church" being "important" to someone is a salvation point! And this is what drives me nuts about some "religions," and the denomination in which I grew up in particular. The Good News is that Jesus took the punishment for our sins on the cross. To be a part of that, one has only to accept the gift. That is what the Bible says. It also says that once we are His, "no one" can snatch us out of His hand. Being a part of a religious belief system in which one can never be sure of his eternal standing has to be emotionally exhausting. Nothing in the Scriptures supports that. To the contrary, Romans 8 tells us that we are not slaves to fear, but that the Holy Spirit testifies that we are so close to God, we can call him "Daddy." We are not only as good as our last act, thank God. We are, when God looks at those who have accepted Christ's redeeming work on the cross, as good as Jesus. So to look at someone who was saved years ago, even someone who has made horrible mistakes (and who among us hasn't?), and be wishy-washy about her place in eternity is somehow diluting the work of the cross, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not worried about my aunt at all. And I can't wait until I can get to know her in all of her perfection soon. 12:34 p.m. - 2007-09-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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