Ever since listening to the free audiobook of Free: The Future of a Radical Price, I’ve been plagued by what the content of this book actually means (if anything) for Christianity.
If you haven’t read the book/listened to it, you have nothing to lose (in terms of $, and the time is worth the insight into our shift from an atom based culture to a bit based culture) check it out for free here
So, my thoughts have mainly revolved around the idea of salvation as free, and how that translates to our culture, and whether or not it actually is free or if it is rather “free”
What I mean by “free” is that old idea of free, with strings attached; it’s the free prize inside of a box of cereal, the free sample to get you to buy a bigger supply, or the free razor for which you are forced to eternally buy disposable blades.
The last example seems fitting for Scientology, where knowledge and advancement in the ‘religion’ costs money every step of the way. (For Jehova’s Witnesses it’s a matter of ‘while supplies last’) But I wonder if we’ve sold Christianity as such?
I don’t even mean it in terms of purely monetary terms either (ie tithes and offerings) but in time, service, purity, morality, etc. Is there an eternal price tag attached to the salvation that Christianity offers? What I’m asking is really nothing unfamiliar to the Christian tradition, because the debate of grace vs. works is old news. I firmly believe that it is by grace that we are saved, absolutely nothing else. (Ephesians 2:8,9) Yet ultimately works become a natural out-flowing of the free salvation we have received by grace.
I am reminded of the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:
10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
I do believe that salvation is the free gift inside of an expensive box of cereal*
*no purchase necessary.
Ultimately one can build his/her whole life with hay, wood, straw. It doesn’t cost that person anything, and they will receive the same salvation. Yet there are also those who pay everything for salvation; their time, money, power, and even their lives.
This, in some way, also relfects the way many free services on the Internet work. Those where 10% of the users pay and their money ensures that the other 90% get the same service for free. Yet with salvation, it is not a matter of dollars and cents, and it isn’t God who is missing out on some potential ‘profit’ by having fewer people ‘pay.’ It is the user who misses out. I’m not talking about a 2 tiered system where there is some sort of ‘premium’ salvation which costs you $25/year.
I think there is more to be gained through the cost. Is that gain in a shiny crown? I couldn’t care less about something like that. Honestly, I don’t know what that gain is in precise terms, other than knowing I followed in the self-sacrificial footsteps of Christ.
I think that’s enough for me right now.