Salvation, Do We Need to Be Saved?

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Salvation raises a lot of questions. The first one is what do we need to be saved from? Is it sin? If it is then just what is sin? Sin is usually described as a transgression of God's law so where do we find God's law? If you're a Christian the answer is that we find God's law in the Bible, more specifically in the Old Testament of the Bible. Some of the things that we find there are pretty horrifying. If a child talks back to its parents it is a sin. The punishment for this sin is being beaten to death. There are many similar examples so let's beat a hasty retreat from the Old Testament on the whole and take a look at the 10 Commandments. There is some good stuff there but also some that is rather silly. It gets a little difficult to figure out why we should have no other God but the one speaking when we are told there is only one God. Ah, need I go on. The Bible does not seem to be a really good source to determine what God's laws are. OK, let's define sin in a little more carefully. We and up with the problem that sin seems to have become almost a generic term. Swearing is a sin but what is swearing. If we look back in history we find that in the time of Chaucer and England swearing had the rather narrow definition of taking the name of the Lord in vain. That definition has now been expanded. A lot of what Godfrey Chaucer wrote about in the Canterbury tales would now be considered swearing. With such a flexible definition how do we determine how can we define the sin that we need to be saved from? We can narrow sin down and restrict it to the concept of original sin. Where did this whole idea come from? The doctrine of original sin was first developed in the second-century by the Bishop of Lyon, Irenaeus in his struggle against Gnosticism. He was pretty big on defining heresy and also determining what punishment heretic should receive. Since a belief in original sin was not a part of Gnosticism they were obviously heretics and should be punished. Their doctrines certainly should not become a part of the Christian belief. The whole concept of original sin was developed as a means to exclude some beliefs from Christianity. When viewed in this light it does not seem to be something we need to be saved from. The other question that needs to be answered is what happens if we are not saved. Well somewhere along the line the early church decided to embrace the idea of hell. Obviously hell was a terrible place that we really didn't want to go. How could we avoid it? Their answer was that the only way we could avoid it was to embrace Jesus Christ as our Savior. This became a method of conversion and enforcement of Christian rules and doctrines. Most of these rules and doctrines became a tool to force allegiance to the rule not only of the church but to the directives of the current local ruler. Do we really need salvation? The answer in the end is no, there is nothing we need to be saved from.