Christian salvation is primarily about ‘being’

ALF McCreary (Saturday Review, October 26) practises catch-and-release fishing in his interview series with senior Church leaders.

Penetrating questions allow an interesting appraisal of the spiritual temperature in Northern Ireland.

Questions are not barbed and this allows honest opinions to be expressed.

Do some mainstream media attempts to put Church leaders on the coals (or into the deep-fat fryer) stifle meaningful dialogue?

In the context of a seemingly relaxed interaction, the President of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Rev Sam McGuffin, says: “We have focused on doing, rather than being, to the extent that the adventure of living in a real and vital faith with the Lord has become misunderstood.”

Abortion and LGBT rights issues are often identified as potent external threats by some Christians. But being gay, or being a human foetus, can never extinguish any person’s unique dignity before God.

Vexed, modern, moral dilemmas can expose a much deeper lack of spiritual clarity in Church congregations around a much simpler question: what is the Gospel?

The website Bethinking. org contains an abbreviated transcript of a superb 2006 talk, Understanding the Root of the Gospel, by a leading Christian apologist and evangelist called Michael Ramsden.

Ramsden asks if Christian salvation is primarily about “thinking, feeling, doing or being”.

Ramsden is convinced of the supremacy of the latter: “In salvation, God takes our very being and changes us.”

Ramsden directs us to the last words of Jesus from the cross, which remind us of the completeness of salvation being offered and that this is totally unconnected to our personal achievements or failures: “It is finished.”