Humans are selfish and egocentric. I call this characteristic a “sin”, in the sense of “missing the (divine) mark”.

Lo-and-behold, our sinful nature is such, that it often even becomes the core of our religion. “Getting saved.” What does that mean? It can mean different things to different people — some meanings are beautiful, some meanings are ugly. For many, “being saved” effectively means “I believe I’m going to heaven after I die”. Their most important drive or focus in their religion is then to achieve that state, selfishly getting what they want, for their own benefit. It becomes the biggest purpose of their religious/spiritual life, and once they feel they’ve achieved that goal, they are satisfied.

…when there are so many other things that is so much more important to our community and the world around us, so many more important things to be concerned about.

Contemporary Conservative Christianity is all too often like that, selfish and ego-centric. Sinful. Concerns about the afterlife is not a divine concern. From what I understand, the ancients (of Hebrew Bible fame) had a more communal understanding of what salvation was about: it was more about the tribe, as a whole, as a community, and less about the selfish individual. Salvation for the tribe: divine.

This is just a quickie. My post on what I call “the divine” is coming soon. On top of that, I will (eventually) try to explain my understanding of “sin” and “salvation”.