Wagering My Soul On A New Bet

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I’m not much of a gambler.

Which, I suppose, is an odd thing to say since I’m heading to Vegas in a couple of weeks, but I’m going to eat, not to gamble.

I did really into poker for a couple of years in college, but that was more about hanging out with friends than the gambling. It certainly wasn’t about getting rich. The buy-in was $5.

I don’t have anything against gambling. I’ll probably play a few hands of blackjack while I’m in Vegas, but I’m mostly ambivalent about it. Of course, I realize that’s not true for some folks. Some folks like to gamble a lot.

Some folks are addicted to gambling.

And some folks will even wager their soul on a bet.

Blaise Pascal was one such fella.

You might not recognize the name, but you’ve probably heard of his famous wager either by name or reputation. Pascal figured that given the stakes involved - you know, an eternity in heaven or hell - it made the most sense to bet on the possibility that God exists because if choose to believe in a God that doesn’t exist, you don’t lose much more than your Sunday mornings. Conversely, if you reject a God that does exist, then, well, hopefully you find yourself on Satan’s good side cause it’s gonna be a while.

Admittedly, I don’t know many people today who would articulate their faith in exactly this sort of way, let alone name drop ole Pascal, but the spirit of his wager is alive and well throughout the Church. You see this particularly in traditions where the fear of hell is front and center. “Turn or burn!” as the tent preachers like to say. But again, even if “turn or burn” isn’t part of your vocabulary, if you grew up in the American church, chances are the spirit of that sentiment permeated your faith and perhaps still does.

Believe in God…or you’ll go to hell.

Accept Jesus into your heart…or you’ll go to hell.

Believe in the Bible…or you’ll go to hell.

Affirm all the right doctrines (and don’t affirm the wrong people)…or you’ll go to hell.

We may not consciously place a wager with Pascal, but many of us very much bind our eternal fate to the fear that should we accidentally believe the wrong things or miss too many Sunday mornings at church we will spend eternity with a permanent sun burn. In other words, given the various possibilities, we’ve wagered, or chosen to believe, that our best bet for heaven is placed when we believe and say and affirm all the right things and reject all the wrong beliefs…and wrong people.

That was certainly the case for me growing up as an evangelical.

Mine was a religion of right ideas.

I certainly never would have articulated it that way. If you even mentioned the word religion I would have quickly shouted you down with “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship!” But my life and beliefs told a much different story.

They told a story narrated, manipulated, and fully controlled in every way by my fear of hell and my constant unspoken fear that not believing just the right things would send me there. Sure, I believed that my relationship with Jesus “saved” me, but in practice that salvation was conditioned if not wholly dependent upon me affirming all the right beliefs about God and the Bible and theology and who was or wasn’t going to hell.

I made a bet at an altar one day (well, many days - especially at church camp) that given the potential risks and rewards, the best bet for saving my soul from hell was believing the right things.

But for me, it wasn’t a bet at all. It was blessed assurance that I was saved by my right ideas, excuse me, I mean my faith alone.

But the further I get outside the evangelical bubble of my youth and the more I spend time actually studying the teachings of Jesus instead of angrily quoting them at strangers, the less I’m convinced my wager was a good one.

I don’t mean to say my faith in God or Jesus or even the Bible was bad or that I’ve rejected my faith in any of those things. I mean I’m less convinced than I once was that should the day come when I stand before Jesus on Judgment Day that any of those right beliefs will actually matter all that much or that Jesus himself is all that concerned with them.

Now, before you dismiss me as a liberal heretic who worships whatever feels good to me, allow me to share where my liberal warm fuzzy religion comes from.

His name is Jesus.

You may have heard of him.

Unlike Pascal, he took the wager out of the eternal equation and just laid it all out there for us because, unlike Pascal, he is the house and he makes the rules.

And in Matthew 25, the one place in the entire Bible where Jesus himself lays out exactly what will happen on Judgment Day, there is eschatological game of roulette to be played to finally find out of we were right about all the things we were convinced we were right about. No theology test to take. Do orthodoxy exam to pass. No question and answer session where we have to prove we believed all the right things and rejected all the wrong people. In fact, and this is most scandalous of all (so scandalous none of us in the Church want to even think about the implications, let alone talk about them), Jesus says he’s not even going to ask if we’re Christians.

Instead, he’ll ask us things like “I was hungry. Did you feed me? I was thirsty. Did you give me something to drink? I was sick. Did you care for me? I was in prison. Did you visit me? I was a stranger. Did you welcome me?”

And, again according to Jesus not a liberal rando heretic like me, there will be a lot of folks who said and believed and testified to all the right things that will be very surprised and disappointed by this situation and its outcome. Because it means that all those beliefs they affirmed and church services they attended and sinners they condemned weren’t actually the key to eternal life.

Which makes a lot of sense if you take a moment to pause and think about. Well, several moments of pauses because there’s a lot of assumptions and baggage and fear we bring to any conversation about eternal life. But if you can find the time and the courage to do that, consider how obvious it all seems when we strip away all the dogma and set aside our fear and look anew at Jesus’ description of the path to eternal life.

Want to live forever?

Help folks live in the here and now.

Life begets more life.

Right ideas don’t do that. Church attendance doesn’t do that. Memorizing the Bible doesn’t do that. Marginalizing sinners sure as hell doesn’t do that.

But you know what does beget life?

Feeding people when they’re hungry because we need food to live. Giving people something to drink because we can’t live without water. Caring for the sick because disease brings death. Visiting the incarcerated because fellowship begets community and life flourishes in community. Welcoming the stranger because lots of those strangers are fleeing places where they would die if they stayed.

Life begets more life.

Want to live forever?

Start living that abundant life now with those around you.

We’ve turned following Jesus into an estoteric religion of abstract right ideas and those right ideas into our best bet for getting into heaven. But if we pause and actually listen to the words of Jesus instead of shouting them at others, we might just find a radically different path to live both eternally and in the here and now and now just for us but for all of us.

Notice I said “different” - not “easy.”

Saying we should love our neighbor is easy. Actually loving our neighbor is much more difficult. It means sharing the things we covet. Giving of ourselves when we’d rather give to ourselves. Caring deeply for strangers we don’t know and welcoming people that make us uncomfortable.

Intellectually agreeing to a list of ideas, memorizing Bible verses, and maintaining perfect attendance at church? That’s a cakewalk compared to loving your neighbor in the real world.

That’s why Jesus talks about camels going through the eyes of needles and narrow gates and difficult paths. The self-centered legalism demanded by the religious leaders of his day was easy compared to the sort of radical self-emptying love and inclusion Jesus was calling folks to embody.

Begetting life is hard.

So hard it took God becoming man and dwelling and dying among us, but God did it anyway because God so loves the world and everyone and everything in it not because they believe in God but simply because they exist.

I know how hard it is to let go of the belief that right beliefs are the key to eternal life. Believe me, I know. I really, really do. And if you don’t believe me, read anything I’ve published in the past decade or so. My entire writing career is essentially me admitting how wrong I was about so many of the things I used to be so certain of while I wrestle with my own ongoing struggle to let go of the false security of right ideas.

But can I tell you something great? Something exciting? Something hopeful? Something some folks might even call good news?

There’s not just freedom on the other side of liberation from dogma.

There’s life.

Abundant life.

And the more I pour my life into the lives of my neighbors - not to save their souls or trick them into going to church, but simply because they’re my neighbors and they’re in need - the more I find my own life flourishing right alongside theirs.

If Jesus was telling the truth about life in the here and now begetting more life in the over yonder, and as far as I can tell he wasn’t one to tell a fib, then I’m willing to go all in on a new wager.

I’m willing to wager that the gates of heaven weren’t thrown open because of right ideas.

I’m willing to wager that eternal life begins in the here and now.

That life doesn’t begin after death.

That if there’s any chance of living on in eternity, the best chance I have, that any of us have of enjoying that life is helping others live now.

Life begetting more life.

I’m willing to wager my soul on simply, recklessly, unapologetically and relentlessly loving my neighbor.

And if I’m wrong?

Well, I’m ok losing that bet.

Because either way it will have been a life well spent.