"Your Soul Is Unsaved. Click Ok To Continue."

Back in the seminary during a discussion on the topic of salvation, I remember being so confused that I whispered to my seatmate the question, “But what about all the Japanese people? They don’t believe in Christ, does that mean that they are not saved?" She was one of the top students in the class and her reply was somewhere along the lines of, “Duh, they’re Buddhists, of course they are not saved.”

Salvation is a weird thing for me back then because it appears to be contingent on the country you are born in. But because I was a Christian studying the word of God with the intent of becoming a pastor, I rationalized that God has made the process of salvation so easy and that is why we have missionaries being sent all in the four corners of the globe. To reach all those godless places and proselytize to all those people who’ve never known Christ.

But let’s dissect for a moment the Doctrine of Imputation, otherwise known as the concept of “Original Sin” and how it all ties in with Salvation:

So God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden. God for some screwed up reason placed the “Tree of Knowledge” and instructed his newly created Man and Woman, aka Adam and Eve not to eat its fruit. Adam and Eve got tricked into eating the forbidden fruit by the very same subversive serpent He also created. Adam and Eve as an after effect of eating the fruit realized they had no underwear and majorly pissed off God, causing them to be thrown out of the garden. And thus began the Fall of Man.

It’s not clear why, but God then held every person moving forward accountable for Adam and Eve’s transgression. Meaning you and I inherited the sin's of two clueless naked newbies. To put it more plainly, cute cuddly seemingly innocent babies are already born with sin.

But not to worry because here comes the Salvation part: The God of the New Testament, who is more laid back than the anger management candidate God of the Old Testament (though they are one and the same) loved the world so much that he decided to come down to earth in the form of Jesus Christ to preach and perform miracles for the descendants of his failed Adam and Eve project. Jesus pissed off the religious leaders for being too cocky and was sentenced to be crucified. He basically sacrificed Himself, to Himself, so that He can appease Himself for the sins He assigned to everyone.

And the only requirement to avail of this Salvation promo is for you to believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, who is Himself, who died for your sin, the sin that Adam and Eve did, the sin you actually didn’t sign up for.

But then again didn’t God cheat? Because after three days, He resurrected Himself and went to join Himself in Heaven leaving his disciples all screwed up and confused as to why He can actually call it a sacrifice when He didn’t have the decency to stay dead.

So how does Salvation really work then? I know it’s still confusing as hell. But I read something that simplified the entire thing pretty nicely:

A guy was drunk driving and crashed his car into his neighbour’s house. His neighbour instead of getting pissed like a normal human being said it’s all good and took out his son and shot him in the head right in front of him. The drunk dude got sober immediately and asked why the hell would he shoot his own son. His neighbour replied to make up for him driving his car into his living room. He demanded that all drunk dude needs to do is to believe he killed his own son for this purpose, otherwise he will lock him up down in his basement and beat him up there for the rest of his life.

As an atheist, I don’t bother with the nonsense of whether my soul gets saved or not. For one thing, I don’t believe in the existence of a soul. When we die, that’s just it, we’re dead. I am just trying to live my life to the fullest because it's the only life I have. Which is why I can’t wait to go back to Japan for another vacation. For a Non Christian country, those "unsaved" Japanese people do seem to be more disciplined than so called Christian nations, plus they make really cool cars and nicely crafted guitars!