There's no one here to save -- a song

In my previous post, I wrote about an upside down perspective that is quite common in our culture today.  Specifically the view that God is looking for an opportunity to send us to Hell.

It is coupled with the perspective that "we don't need no saving."  It's often stated as "I'm okay, you're okay."  I think this perspective is captured in this song by Sara Bareilles which was popular about 5 years ago.

Sara Bareilles  -- King of Anything

The song says:

I hate to break it to you babe,
but I'm not drowning
There's no one here to save.

If you don't need to be saved, there is no need for a Savior.  There is no need for Jesus.

But what is clear is that Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

In the early 1980's Kurt Russel had the lead role in a movie entitled "Escape from New York."   The premise of the movie is that New York (Manhattan) has become so bad, that it was turned into a penal colony, and cut off from the rest of the world.  Its' motto was "No one gets out alive."

That's where we live.  It is obvious to even the most casual observer that nobody lives forever.  We will all die, our children will die, and everybody we know will die sometime. 

We live in this "penal colony."

I seem to recall, but cannot specifically find, Peter Kreeft writing in "What Catholics Believe" that there are only sinners in the world.

I always look at this as there are sinners and repentant sinners.  It is by repenting of our sins, repeatedly and often, that we become, through the grace of God and the ministry of the Church, Saints.

Sinners need saving.  But, many sinners don't realize it ... yet.
They think they are not drowning, that they're okay.

And this is a comforting perspective.  But it is mistaken.  From the time of our birth (in point of fact from the time of our conception) we are on a one way road that leads to death.  We are all driving down this road at the same speed (one day at a time).  Some people get off at the next exit, some have an exit that is still a few miles off.

But, nobody gets out alive.

We are on the road to death.  But we must ask again "what is death?"  There is physical death which is obvious to everyone, but there is also spiritual death, eternal death, the second death spoken of in the Book of Revelation.  We begin on the path to eternal death as well as the path to physical death.

That is why we need saving.  That is why God sent the Son into the world.

Jesus, who says "I am the way, the truth and the life," came into the world to save sinners, to save you and me.  He has opened the gates of Heaven, and is himself the Gate and the Path to the Gate.

It is in Christ that we come to know the only true God and him who he has sent.

Let us acknowledge our need for the Savior, let us acknowledge our sins, and then let us repent of our immoral acts, our sins, that we may come to immortality from this life of immorality, resting in the hands of God where no torment may touch us.