Looking back on my spiritual journey, which can be summed up as a journey from a narrow ideology to the wide arms of Jesus, I can now recognize various formative moments that became small stepping stone toward where I am today. I've shared a few of these on my About Page. Today I was thinking about another, perhaps one of the earliest turning points.

 When I was about 7 years old, I was attempting to "witness" to one of my friends on the schoolyard playground. I told him, to be saved and go to heaven, all you have to do is believe in Jesus. He said, OK, indicating he had no problem with this requirement. My response was something along the lines of, "Great, now all you have to do is say a prayer, and make sure you say This, That, and The Other." (I wanted to be sure it would stick -- you have to get the magic words just right.) But wait, we're not done. After you say that prayer, you have to pray every day, and you have to go to a church that believes exactly all the things I do (make sure it has 'baptist' or 'bible' in the name), and start reading through your Bible, cover to cover.

In hindsight, I now see that that kind of evangelical/fundamental Christianity was a  bigger up-sell game that any multi-level marketing scheme. (Strangely, my hometown is also the birthplace of Amway, but I digress....)  "For the low, low price of just simple belief, you too can avoid eternal damnation! Oh, but we have these lovely add-ons, and you'll also be needing this, that, and the other, if you want to really use the product to it's potential."

I'm certainly not the first to take note of the way that our sales & marketing driven consumerism has affected our presentation of the gospel. But it's been relatively recently that I've been able to see these effects in my own life. So often what fundamental churches explictly teach about salvation doesn't match up with what they practice when seeking converts. If I have turned from the faith of my youth, it is primarily that I have embraced more of what my church taught and less of what it practiced.

In short, Salvation = Jesus + Nothing. Not my personal intepretation of the Bible. Not my list of Do's and Don'ts. Not my hairstyle, musical preference, or sexual orientation. All you need is Jesus. He'll take care of the rest.