The one thing I've never really been able to wrap my mind around is the personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I dunno about anybody else, but coming face-to-face with Jesus at the Pearly Gates has always been pretty hard to imagine.
What I can imagine, oddly enough, is being saved into the community. It's an odd thought, but it shouldn't be. The church is the "body of Christ," after all. So perhaps the "face-to-face" wouldn't be so much a personal interaction as entry into a new, reconciled community. I find that thought appealing not least because there's never been a community in this world I could settle into without at least a little ambivalence. Which, to be clear, says more about me and my curmudgeonly ways than the communities in which I've been involved. Still, it's nice to think that there is no part of the self - even those tensions we cannot fully name or understand - that is beyond redemption. I guess we'll find out in the sweet bye-and-bye.
The first paragraph is something I can second. I'm not sure where it comes from, or what it means. A "personal relationship"? That isn't exactly what the Bible calls us to, nor is it evident in Jesus ministry.
The second paragraph, however, is no less mystifying for me. I have to say that I'm just not sure what the afterlife is all about, if it even is. If it is, I can honestly say that I do not think it will conform to anything we can understand, or have experienced.
As for what may or may not be beyond redemption - again, a hearty second. Even out-and-out rejection of God does not, I believe, put us beyond the pale. In seminary, I read a sermon by the wonderfully gifted preacher and originator of Christian anti-Semitism John Chrysostom, in which he portrays the grace of Jesus Christ as being a person of many disguises. One of those disguises is a beggar pursuing us down the street even as we have ignored and even perhaps chased him away with threats of and actual violence. We are pursued by the hound of heaven, and this one will not rest until we are captured.
I have long since reconciled myself to being completely agnostic about "what comes next". Whether it's the silence of oblivion, the Pearly Gates and Golden Streets, the final resurrection of the Dead, or something else entirely - I honestly have no opinions (although I used to joke in seminary that, rather than wine and bread, I always imagined the eschatological banquet at which we are to sit and share to consist of Guinness Stout and Peanut M&M's). I am more and more convinced as each day passes that God is far more concerned with our lives here and now. We are called not to shed our concerns with this world, but to love it transcendently, to work for its reclamation, and like the God who has captured us in grace and love, never ever give it up as lost. Not only is there nothing in us that is beyond redemption; there is nothing that is that is beyond the possibility of God's love granting it eternal salvation.
