Clinging to Salvation

In Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace, he relates a story about a friend that decided to test the limits of God's forgiveness (pages 179-180).

The potential for "grace abuse" was brought home to me forcefully in a conversation with a friend I'll call Daniel.  Late one night I sat in a restaurant and listened as Daniel confided to me that he had decided to leave his wife after fifteen years of marriage. He had found someone younger and prettier, someone who "makes me feel alive, like I haven't felt in years."  He and his wife had no strong incompatibilities.  He simply wanted a change, like a man who gets an itch for a newer model car.

A  Christian, Daniel knew knew well the personal and moral consequences of what he was about to do.  His decision to leave would inflict permanent damage on his wife and three children.  Even so, he said, the force pulling him toward the younger woman, like a powerful magnet, was too strong to resist.

I listened to Daniel's story with sadness and grief, saying little as I tried to absorb the news.  Then, during the dessert course, he dropped the bombshell: "Actually, Philip, I have an agenda.  The reason I wanted to see you tonight was to ask you a question that's been bothering me.  You study the Bible. Do you think God can forgive something as awful as I am about to do?"

...

Here is what I told my friend Daniel, in a nutshell. "Can God forgive you?  Of course.  You know the Bible.  God uses murderers and adulterers.  For goodness' sake, a couple of scoundrels named Peter and Paul led the New Testament church.  Forgiveness is our problem, not God's.  What we have to go through to commit sin distances us from God--and there is no guarantee we will ever come back.  You ask me about forgiveness now, but will you even want it later, especially if it involves repentance?"

Yancey's explanation of our tenuous relationship to God's gift of grace was vividly illustrated for me as I watched the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks.  In the movie, Hank's character,  Chuck Nolan, becomes marooned on a deserted island when the FedEx plane he is on crashes in the South Pacific.  Chuck survives alone on the island for four years.  As a result of his complete isolation, Chuck constructs an imaginary friend, that he names Wilson, from a volleyball that washes up from the plane's cargo.  Near the end of the movie, Chuck manages to build a raft and leave the island taking his only companion, Wilson, with him.

For days he floats on the vast ocean, waiting and hoping to cross paths with a ship and be saved.  One day, while Chuck sleeps exhausted from storms, exposure and hunger, Wilson quietly falls into the water and begins to slowly float away. By the time Chuck realizes what has happened, Wilson is already 20 yards away.  Grabbing a homemade rope tethered to the raft, Chuck leaps into the water and tries to swim to Wilson, all the while yelling desperately, "Wilson! come back! Wilson!"  As Chuck comes to the end of the rope he glances back to the raft and then to Wilson, both are about 30 yards away.  As he continues to cry out to Wilson, you see that he is wrestling with a gut-wrenching decision: let go of the rope and risk losing the raft, or return to the raft and lose Wilson.  In agony, Chuck makes his choice and returns to the raft, all the while crying Wilson's name.

As you watch Chuck, you can't help being affected by his agony and sense of loss.  And yet, the insanity of his predicament is also inescapable.  The line between real and imaginary blurred so much for Chuck that he considered risking his life to save Wilson, a construct of his own imagination.  As I thought about this touching scene, I realized how similar it was to Yancey's friend, Daniel.

Like Chuck, we ofter attach tremendous importance to an earthly relationship or thing that will, in the light of eternity, prove ultimately worthless.  We conjure our own Wilson's, things that we squander our time and affections on.  It doesn't matter to us if our Wilson is incapable of reciprocating our affections because Wilson is all about how Wilson makes us feel.  We face a dilemma: will we abandon salvation to chase our Wilson, or will we abandon Wilson and hold fast to our salvation?  These situations are often heart-wrenching because even though Wilson is imaginary, our affections are very real.  How much more heart-wrenching when we realize that we have chosen something worthless and imaginary over the priceless and eternal.

"Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs."
- Jonah 2:8 (NIV)