"Are you saved, Lance?"

Updated below with a note from Uncle Merlin.

Been a long time since anyone's asked me that question.

Used to get asked it fairly regularly.

I wonder what's happened to change that.

Maybe I scare off even the most zealous of missionaries with my haunted and depraved look of the certainly damned.  A quick glance tells them I'm a hopeless cause and they put their literature back in their pockets and move on in quest of less irredeemable souls.

Maybe it's just the opposite.  Maybe I have an ineffable air of saintliness.  Looking in the mirror lately, I have noticed a growing resemblance to one of the grayer apostles in Da Vinci's Last Supper, one of the less well-known ones like Philip or James the Lesser or St Jude Not Judas JUDE!

But if that were the case then wouldn't people be coming up to me to ask if they were saved?

Or at least to ask what would Jesus really do?

So maybe it's that I live in one of the bluest of the Blue States and spend all of my time among latte sippers and arugula munchers and just don't rub elbows with enough of the godly.

Or maybe it's that they live in one of the bluest of the Blue States and they've gotten tired of having their heads bitten off by the ungodly...or laughed at.

Most of us ungodly are fairly polite but a few of us can forget our manners and be a tad inconsiderate of other people's feelings.

Back in Indiana I wouldn't say you couldn't walk down a street without some well-meaning apocalyptic type shoving a pamphlet or a bible at you, but I probably had to tactfully ignore or deflect that question at least once a month.  Whenever two or more were gathered not necessarily in His name someone would bring His name into it in an attempt to steer the conversation towards some form of the question.

Back when I was teaching freshman comp to earnest young Hoosiers I used to give as their first assignment a short essay about an event that had a significant impact on their lives.  You know, a little process, a little description, a little analysis, no heavy lifting.  The point was for me to get a sense of their weaknesses and strengths as writers.  Often it was, well, English.  But nevermind.  My rookie year I knew enough to put some limits on the subject.  There are things you don't want your freshman comp teacher to know or marking up with red ink.  "I understand what a beautiful moment this was for you, Amber, but it would be an even more beautifully written moment if you didn't misplace your modifier at this point.  As you've written it, you've got yourself kissing his car."

Also there are some descriptive passages to which you do not want to add the words "dangling participle"

So I would set some ground rules.

"Don't write about anything you wouldn't want broadcast on the news of your local TV station," I'd say.  "And don't write about the time you fell in love.  I hate mush."

Took me one semester to learn to add, "And don't write about the time you finally got right with the Lord."

I refrained from muttering, "And about how I need to get right with Him too."

Wasn't just some of my well-meaning students.  One day a textbook salesman dropped by my office.  He was scanning over the books on the shelves over my desk, looking for a gap he could offer to fill from his company's inventory and his eyes lit up when I saw a familiar gold-embossed binding.

"I see you have a Bible," he said and there was a note of enthusiasm in his voice that warned me he was not about to start talking about Harold Bloom, Northrup Frye, and Robert Alter.

"That's so I can quote Scripture for my own purpose," I said with my friendliest smile.

I don't know if the salesman knew his Shakespeare as well as he knew his gospels but he took the hint, dropped off his catalog, and scrammed.

But at parties, in meetings, in casual conversations in the barber shop or the dentist's waiting room or in line at the post office, regularly enough that I gave up thinking I was simply a magnet for random nutcases and began thinking there was a sizable segment of the population of Fort Wayne among whom my salvation was a matter of general concern.

Not my salvation specifically, but the salvation of not-so-innocent strangers.

Awful kind of them.

But just because I haven't been asked the question since I left Indiana, that doesn't mean I think it's an exclusively Red State custom.  We worship an awesome God here in the Blue States too and there are a lot of us who like to bother Him and bother other people about Him.

Once upon a time, a hundred years ago, back when I was in college, a girl I'd been friends with in high school called me up and asked me out to dinner.  Being twenty years old I naturally jumped to conclusions and, man, was I surprised when she spent the evening telling me about how she'd found Jesus and how she could help me find him too.

I said, "I didn't know he was lost."

She said, putting a comforting hand on my wrist and looking me meaningfully in the eyes, "We're the ones who are lost, Lance."

She said it in a way that made me feel awfully alone inside that editorial "we."

Another time, also a hundred years ago, I was driving up to Lake George to join my folks for a long weekend up at the Hague and I stopped for lunch at a diner just below Bolton Landing.  The counterman was a guy named Jeff who looked to me to be about thirty-five but somehow came across as close to my age.  There was a boyishness about him that didn't suggest youth itself so much as a steadfast refusal to grow up.   He was over-friendly, way too interested in me and where I was going and why I was traveling all alone "way up here," as if instead of being an hour north of Albany I was a few minutes south of Hudson Bay.  I was stuck there with burger and milkshake so I gave him as polite but vague answers as I could, the whole time wondering whether he was cruising me or plotting my murder and dismemberment.  I was not all that much relieved when he finally got around to his point.

"Are you saved, Lance?"

"I sure hope so, Jeff," I said, "Or else I'm wasting my time in the seminary."

I thought that was a pretty snappy comeback, worthy of Hawkeye Pierce even, and I was sure it would shut him up and make him go away.

Nope.

The fact that as far as he knew he was talking to a future priest, someone intending to devote his life to God, only encouraged him.  What I didn't know at the time was that Catholic is not the same as Christian to people like Jeff.  In fact, it's almost less Christian in their minds than atheist or Jew.

Jeff started to explain to me that I couldn't be considered saved until I accepted Jesus as my personal savior and fool that I was, I tried to explain to him that Jesus' role as Savior was sort of a given where I came from but that none of us felt an exclusive, personal right to claim him for our individual own.

I was treated to an extensive exegesis on John 3:16 that was only cut short by one of the waitresses finally having had enough herself and coming up to remind Jeff that their boss had warned him about bothering customers like this.

Jeff's certainty that I was on the road to hell despite my supposed vocation, because I was a Catholic, reminds me that once upon a time, back when she was in college, the blonde was invited on an overnight white water rafting trip by a woman she worked with at the place she had an internship that summer.  This by the way was in one of the bluer parts of Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia.  It wasn't until they were all out in the woods and around the campfire that the blonde found at that the group she was with was a church group and not just any church group but an Assembly of God church group and that the purpose of the trip was a kind of spiritual intervention---the woman who'd invited her wanted to save the blonde from Catholicism.

I wish someone could get it through the heads of values voting Catholics who've signed on with the Republicans that the only Christians the GOP cares about are the Right Wing fundamentalist kind who think Catholics are going to hell.  Might help to point out which candidate for President is a believer and has the devout Catholic as his running mate and which one is a non-believer and has the former Assembly of God type as his and that having the Catholic as his running mate is one more reason the supposedly Religious Right doesn't like the believer and that his having the former Assembly of God type on his ticket is the main reason the supposedly Religious Right has finally jumped aboard the non-believer's bandwagon.

This isn't only about abortion.  It's about the control of hearts and minds.  It's about getting us all to think alike by getting us all to worship alike.

Which is why as a Catholic, a bad one, an angry one, and pretty much a disbelieving one, but still a nostalgic one, that question, Are you saved?, strikes me as an insult.

But it's an insult to anyone who gets asked it, because it assumes all kinds of things the asker has no right to assume, the main one being that the asker knows more than person being asked and the second one being that the person being asked is damned unless he answers not just Yes, but a very specific form of yes.

Given that the asker isn't just expecting you to give the wrong answer, he's hoping you will so he can start the work of "saving" you, asking that question is a conscious attempt to start an argument, no matter how friendly the asker is pretending to be.

They don't all pretend to be friendly.

Back in Indiana that question and its variants could be tests.  The people asking it were trying to find out if I was one of them and if it was safe for them to talk to me.  The question "Are you saved?" was a way of asking if I wanted to hear a faggot joke or listen to them tell me about the damn liberals or feminists or blacks or Jews or whoever it was who was ruining God's country for them.

But more often than not the question was sincere and motivated by what they thought of as good intentions.

Jeff seemed like a well-meaning type and I'm sure he thought he was being compassionate, trying to save my soul for me.  But I don't believe for a minute that saving my soul was the point.  The object of this kind of salvation work seems pretty clearly to be trophy collecting.  Look, what I brought you today, Lord.  Which fits with my general prejudice about their sort of religion which has always struck me as a matter of waving furiously at the sky in the hope of catching God's attention so he can see what good and faithful servants he's got working for him down here.

They pray for salvation in the same spirit they ask their boss for a raise.

Note from Uncle Merlin:  Greetings from Chatham on Elbow, Cape Cod.  Saw this bumper sticker on a pick up truck down by the fish pier---"When religion ruled the world it was called The Dark Ages"

Comments

[apostate]

You hate mush??!!!

[Mike Schilling]

That's all very interesting, Lance, but the real question is "Are you saved?".

[Rana]

You know, people often give Jehovah's Witnesses a bad rap for coming to your door and bugging you about their church - but I have found that they respond quite politely to statements of uninterest. I can't say the same for the "Are you saved?" people.

Sometimes reminding them that faith is a matter between you and the Lord and that no one can force true faith on a person works. Sometimes.

[MikeT]

A few years ago, I was stuck in customs hell coming back from Japan, and one of these guys saw me as a good target. He asked if he was saved, and I came back with, "I appreciate the spirit behind your question, and thanks for caring. I'm more than willing to talk religion with you, but the state of my soul is between myself and god. Is that cool?"

And we ended up having a pretty decent conversation about the relief work he was doing in Asia.

[Linkmeister]

In all my airport time I don't remember the Hare Krishnas attempting to save my soul. Ring annoying bells, yes; proselytize, no.

[Falstaff]

I cannot say in a space this short how much I agree with what you've written above. One of the things that's relived me -- filled me with actual relief -- about moving to Australia is that I haven't had to deal with random people sticking their nose into the state of my eternal soul. And I came from Portland, the most urban place in Oregon, the most unchurched state in the nation. (I'm kind of perversely proud of that, as a believer myself.) I can't even imagine what it must be like in other places.

I've told this story in another space, I know -- maybe even here -- but I think it's a nice tell about the contrasts. Some time ago, my wife and I went to a friend's house to watch a rugby match. When the match was over (and, of course, our side had won, ha ha, sweet revenge for last year) they were doing the postgame interviews with the stars, as they always do, you know.

And when that was done, I looked at my wife and her friend and mentioned how weirdly nice it was not to hear anyone talking about Jesus in a postgame interview.

They (Aussies born and bred both) stared at me. They actually chorused "Jesus doesn't have anything to do with football!"

Nobody here talks about Jesus here unless it's actually pertinent to the conversation. We have a few crazy street preachers, but besides them. It's... really quite nice.

[Falstaff]

As an addendum to my post above, I will mention the time one of two busybodies out to Convert Souls for Jesus cornered my wife one day on her way home from work. She mentioned she was a Quaker. She almost had Busybody #1 converted to the Society of Friends before Busybody #2 noticed, panicked, and dragged him away.

[Samuel]

Dear Lord,

I've been asked that question from my childhood, when I did not even know what the question meant. My response as a child was to nod, stay away from the person and complain to my mother who would ask me to just be polite and not mind it. Growing up in India, it was usually the Assembly of God people who asked this question.

We do have a lot of AG friends back in India, so the response still is to just nod politely and try to steer the conversation in safer directions. Nothing is more infuriating than the sad glances you get and the conversations that imply that you have 'strayed'.

My closest aunts and their children are all fervent believers, (one cousin's an AG priest) and I've had to endure plenty of prayers calling for God to bring my mother back to the fold as one would say, with me present right there. (No one would dare do it with my mother around) and I am sure there were prayers for me too. :D And my mother is no atheist or Catholic either, she just is not as fervent as them.

Another variation on this was the 'Are you Born Again' question that was to plague me in Missouri. My stock answer was 'I was born a Christian' and the same polite smile in the hope that the person who asked me this would move on. The pain started when they did not take the hint.

Your post just stirred up the 'bad' memories from my time in an AG flock back in MO. :-).

[actor212]

Six years ago, between the separation and the divorce, I chanced to date a rather lovely lady whom I met online thru a dating site.

We went out to drinks near Madison Square Park, in a bar/restaurant just off the northeast corner of the park, Lovely sunny afternoon, late Spring as I recall.

I met her there, and my anxiety about these things disappated quickly: she was as her photo implied.

We took seats at the bar and ordered wine, first a glass, then a bottle, then appetizers. We talked, and laughed, about popular culture, the embarassing way we met, this and that, and the bartender who was rather remarkable in a sort of "My Left Foot" sort of fashion, seemingly able to do the impossible with the burdens God had granted him (a thoroughly incompetent waitstaff, for one).

An hour passed, then two, and we kissed at the bar. Ah, the signal. We gathered our things, and I walked her to the corner, prepared to actually have a warm body next to me that night. Visions danced in my head: the listing in the Sunday Times Style section of our impeding nuptials, the obligatory, "Congratulations, Carl! You have my sympathies, Patty!" introductions...

A cab appeared out of the gloaming, the yellow the only brightness in an otherwise dull stone vista.

I opened the door for her, gentleman that I am. She turned to me and asked, "Have you taken Jesus into your heart."

I slammed the door and ran.

[actor212]

PS no need to grade that, Lance. I would give myself a "C" for grammar and syntax.

[Michael Bartley]

Late to this post...but have to tell Lance, Falstaff and actor212 that I am still laughing. "Jesus doesn't have anything to do with football" Now, that is funny. Actor212 slamming the door reminds me of the old song Pamela Brown, "I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown all of my good times all my messin' around..." Anyway, great post great comments. "...doesn't have anything to do with football" Can't wait for the games this weekend to see if Jesus will make the post-game.

[Jon H]

I often get the feeling that they're playing some kind of Holy Bingo. Or that they've misunderstood the idea of Christ the Redeemer by thinking they can collect souls and turn them in to collect the deposits.

It's like a kind of greed.