My question is this: My family are not Christian, which is something I'm coming to terms with as I grow in my faith. For my parents, I don't think there's much I can do, as they've made their decisions and are pretty stuck in them. But my brother. My amazing big brother has Down Syndrome, and as such does not grasp the concept of God or religion. I'm terrified that that means He won't be saved, but surely God will not send him to hell because He is physically incapable of understanding? I've tried to find some stuff on the internet, without any luck, so do you have any wisdom on what you think God's policy with disabled people is? -Gee
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Thanks for writing, Gee.
Quite a few Christian Traditions have attached a great deal of importance to being "saved," that is, that one existential moment when a person asks Jesus into their heart, or makes some other highly visible sign of a personal relationship with God, and thereby is known to be a Christian. In those traditions it quickly becomes the primary aim of evangelism to get a non-believer to have that "saved" moment.
I find that theology to be highly problematic, for several reasons, but the biggest one is the emphasis on personal understanding and acceptance. This theology (as it exists today, anyway) is largely a byproduct of the fundamentalist movement, which was an attempt to combine theology and Biblical Scholarship with Modern sensibilities. This brought with it a sort of "shame" on faith, the idea that we were supposed to be unshakable in what we believed, without doubt, based on the Biblical "evidence."
Now, that is an effective (if highly damaging) way to organize a church. Make it a shame to doubt and you can quickly get people into lock-step with each other, and trample the world under your footsteps. But there are those who get left out by that kind of theology, people who are honest about the fact of doubt in their lives, and people like your big brother.
When we tie salvation to cognition, what do we do with people who don't make that base cognitive standard? There are quite intelligent people in the world who simply cannot deal in abstracts... what could be more abstract than an invisible God who teaches through parable?
When I was working as a Hospice Chaplain, I was often called upon to do funerals for people who were unchurched, or on the outs with their church. I must have heard a thousand variations on, "Well, they had a tough life,but I assure you she was saved..." or "She wasn't always so sure about her Bible learnin', but she knew Jesus," as if people were asking me to sign off on a spiritual report card.
I can't speak for your tradition here, and your pastors may disagree with me, but I can tell you what I believe, and on this topic, I believe it with all of my heart.
You don't need to worry about your big brother. The gifts of God are not now, and have never been, contingent on our ability to understand them, because the truth is, NONE of us completely understand them. There is always more to learn, more to study, more to pray about. We were saved before the universe existed, by a simple, inexorable fact... God loves us.
God loves your brother, and your parents. God also loves you, and knows that for you, any supposed paradise would not live up to the name if they weren't there with you.
So keep on loving your amazing big brother. Talk to him about your faith from time to time, not in anxiety for his soul but to share yours with someone you love. (You might be surprised how much he does understand, emotionally and cognitively.) God made both of you. God loves both of you.
In the end, that's all that matters, not whether or not he can understand and clearly express the idea of being "saved."
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