Friday, January 17, 2014

Can Unbelievers Be Saved?

I found this on Facebook just a moment ago.

We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Since we've been reading the New Testament, I've been getting a lot of practice at reading passages that are confusing at first reading, then reading the passages again to find out what they're actually trying to say. I'll try to do that here.

The first sentence is pretty straightforward. You can omit the "do" in today's language, but that's the only real difference between that sentence and a sentence you could expect to hear spoken in modern times.

The second sentence is the one that I had to read twice. "We do not know," or cannot be sure, or have little reason to believe "that only those who know Him," only those who believe in Christ and profess to be Christians, "can be saved by Him."

I personally believe that, for reasons that almost don't make sense to me, God is more forgiving to those who don't know of His commandments and ignorantly break them than He is to those who know His commandments and try, but fail, to keep them (though I suppose that may depend on how hard they were actually trying).

For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation.
D&C 82: 3

Could it be said, then, that of him unto nothing is given, nothing is required; and he who "sins" against no light shall receive no condemnation? If that were the case, all of mankind could have been saved simply by not being given any knowledge or evidence that God exists! But that would have defied at least one of the main reasons we came to earth in the first place, and the question is entirely academic anyway, since everyone who has ever lived on the earth has been given at least some light via the Light of Christ, better known as the conscience.

While it's true that many people have no knowledge of, or at least no belief in, Jesus Christ, everyone has a basic knowledge of right and wrong. If a person is trying to be good and do what's right, they earn points for that, and if they do what they feel is probably wrong to do, that goes on the permanent record as well. Even if a person doesn't know about God and His commandments, he is still forced to make choices between right and wrong, and his choices in large measure determine whether or not he'll be saved, regardless of whether he ever hears of or develops a belief in Him by whose power he is saved.

Ignorance is not an excuse to do evil, but nor is it cause for exclusion from the Kingdom of God. In a similar manner, knowledge of God's commandments can help us to keep them, but merely having such knowledge does not guarantee our salvation. We may know that Christ is our Savior, but we still have to actually keep His commandments, or at least sincerely strive to, in order to be saved.

We are all judged according to our actions, according to the light and knowledge we have. Some people are given more light than others, and those people are expected to live according to that light they've been given. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we are given a great deal of light, and we are expected to live better lives because of it. But even if a person is blessed with an abundance of light and is very diligently righteous in living by that light, he should not feel superior to those who stumble in darkness, but are doing the best they can with what little light they have. I'm convinced that such are as welcome in the Kingdom of God as those who know the commandments and keep them.

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