The Epidemic of the Sinner’s Prayer

The growing idea of the sinner's prayer is said to be less than 500 years old, stemming from more protestant interpretations of the Bible, and reaching its peak of popularity around the time of Billy Graham. I said the sinner's prayer once when I four. I don't remember saying it, but according to my mother's account, I was a little stinker before saying it, and after, a delightful little girl. As I grew, I always accepted that I was a Christian, recounting my conversion experience through the eyes of my mother and never my own.

There was only one time in my youth when I thought to ask any sort of question about the idea of salvation. I don't know how old I was, preteen at the most, when a missionary came to my Sunday school and showed us pictures of her long-term missionary trip to Papua New Guinea. About the same time in my history lessons, I was reading about secluded tribes in Africa where there was little, if any, exposure to Western culture, let alone Christianity. "Do you really think that God would damn people to hell if they've never heard the gospel?" I asked Mom one day. "I mean, it's one thing if someone's heard about Jesus and doesn't believe in him as Savior, but it's another thing if they've never even heard about Jesus. Would God damn people when it's not their fault that they haven't heard?"

She looked pensively at me for a moment before she answered. "The Bible says that all will have heard the Good News by the time of Christ's return."

"Yes, but people are dying today, people who've never heard, never even had a chance to say no to Jesus."

She thought again, then reached for her leather-bound Bible on the kitchen table, flipping it to the heavily-highlighted book of Romans. She read, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." She set down her Bible. "Our world, everything that has been created, speaks of a divine Creator. The evidence of God is plain to see. If people are not saved, it will still be by their choice."

Her answer still didn't quite satisfy me. It felt as though she was dodging my question. "Yes, but what about Jesus? The Bible says that no one gets to the Father except through him. Nature can't tell anybody about Jesus. It can only point to a divine Creator. So if a person believes in God, just not the way we do because of Jesus, does that still mean they're going to hell?"

She didn't say anything for a long time, until finally she said, "Maybe you should ask Jesus when you meet him in heaven one day. There are some things we'll never know."

I didn't question the idea of salvation anymore. I shoved it aside into all the categories of my faith that I didn't understand. It didn't affect me anyway, did it? It only affected people whom I've never seen nor met in distant countries. And so it was that I didn't revisit this idea of salvation and the sinner's prayer until much later, eighteen in fact. You see, I'd always been somewhat self-conscious of my testimony, that is, my personal account of my salvation story, because it always felt so flat and lack-luster, like the reason why I'm a Christian is, well, because I've always been one. I hated to admit this to myself, but I always felt the need to conjure up a salvation experience, or perhaps embellish my own into something that it wasn't. I needed a pivotal moment, a shifting, one where I once was lost, but was now found. Telling people that I was a little hell-bound four-year-old didn't seem to cut it.

I began to wonder about this idea of the sinner's prayer not being what makes us Christians. It's almost like certain Protestants have created this whole mentality that if a person has never prayed this prayer, that they can't consider themselves Christians, and will in turn go to hell. You must do this to be this, they say, just like the more mainline denominations baptize infants as soon as they're born so that they can be assured that the baby's soul is safe. I can't help but think that both ideas are either, one, fear-based faith, or two, tradition and nothing more.

I never considered how against the idea of the sinner's prayer I was until Hadessah was Sunday school age. At the time, we were attending a Baptist church and I was reading the church bulletin about its Wednesday night Children's classes. For her age group (she was 5), it said that the program will give them a basic understanding of faith, and often, some Children will make a decision for salvation during these classes. I never took her there. I could picture the teacher giving a lesson on heaven and hell, and once the subject of hell was broached and the teacher would ask the children if they wanted to ask Jesus into their hearts, all the kids' hands would shoot up—because no child wants to go to hell. Hell is fire and pitchforks and eternal gnashing of teeth, and heaven is fluffy clouds, gold streets, and huge mansions. Huge mansions. I thought of Hadessah's favorite TV show, Extreme Home Makeover, and couldn't bear the thought. Of course she'd choose the mansions! That is not authentic faith!

We started attending another church, which we actually liked a lot in the beginning. To our surprise a close family member started attending with us. The pastor started taking a keen interest in the status of this person's soul, so he finally asked me, "Does so-and-so know the Lord yet?"

I admit, my defenses took over; I didn't ever want anyone to approach members of my family and ask them such a questions. "Is this person's spiritual status yours to know?" I wanted to retort but didn't. "I don't know," I said. "I think so-and-so ponders the idea of God and is possibly a believer." I waved my hand in the air dismissively. "Anyway, Jeremy (my husband) himself has never said the sinner's prayer, but he is a believer, and I don't think it makes his faith any less authentic."

I think I sent the pastor's wheels turning. What do you mean you don't believe in the sinner's prayer?What kind of Christian are you? But I didn't care. I can't make myself adopt a belief system simply because I say that I am a woman of faith, and I don't care if it discredits me. I can't help but think we Christians have diseased the whole idea of redemption, that maybe heaven and hell isn't what our faith, and especially our initial faith, is about. We've diseased our Godly wonder and made it into a system of responses. We've diseased salvation by making it divisive, so that there are those of us who "know" God, and those who don't.

As I wrap this up, I can't help but realize that my words seem angry, and as I self-reflect, I realize that I am angry. I try to pass it off as some sort of harmless thing that some Christians believe, but to me, it is so much more than that.