Salvation, But Make It Optional
On Why I Don’t Need Saving, Thank You Very Much
There’s a special kind of comedy — a cosmic, existential, absurdist sort of comedy — in realizing just how many religious supremacists genuinely believe the rest of us are wandering around lost. Not just confused. Not just spiritually undecided. But lost, capital-L, in the eternal sense.
If you’ve ever questioned their theology, or stepped outside their belief system, or minded your own business while not being sufficiently impressed by their PowerPoints on Heaven, they assume you must be silently begging to be “saved.”
As if atheists, agnostics, pagans, the casually spiritual-but-not-in-a-MLM-way, and everyone else are just standing in a foggy parking lot of metaphysical despair waiting for some evangelical crossing guard to usher us toward the crosswalk of redemption.
No, thank you. I’m good.
The Afterlife Ultimatum That Isn’t
I’ve always found Christian afterlife mythology a fascinating blend of cosmic horror and children’s coloring book simplicity:
Door #1: Endless torment, fire, screaming, doom.
Door #2: Eternity with sanctimonious, judgmental Christofascist morons and their narcissistic sky daddy.
Given that lineup, I’ll be honest: the flames sound downright peaceful. At least, historically, the demons seem to have better boundaries.
But snark aside, here’s the thing: this entire false choice is meaningless to me. Neither the threat of hell nor the promise of heaven concerns me. They don’t guide my ethics, shape my decisions, or loom over me like some divine HR department monitoring my performance.
I don’t need the fear of eternal punishment to behave decently. And I don’t need the incentive of celestial real estate to try to make the world less terrible while I’m here.
The Quiet, Underrated Comfort of Mortality
People sometimes recoil when I say this, but it’s true: I find tremendous peace in knowing that when my time is up, I will cease to exist.
No judgment. No cosmic scoreboard. No dramatic sequel. Just the quiet, natural return to the same nothingness that preceded my arrival. My atoms will rejoin the universe, and eventually a few worms will get a really gourmet meal out of the deal.
There is something freeing about accepting impermanence. Something grounding. Something that makes the present moment more precious, not less.
Religions often frame mortality as a threat or a flaw — a temporary holding pattern before “real” life begins somewhere else. But what if this is the real thing? What if the meaning comes not from eternity, but from the fact that we don’t get eternity?
What if the finiteness is the gift?
The Life I Actually Care About
Since I don’t spend my days preparing for an afterlife, I pour my energy into the one I actually have.
I care about being a good parent, partner, friend, and human. I care about the stories I write, the communities I support, the harm I try not to cause, and the small acts of kindness or courage that ripple outward in ways I may never see.
If the people I love remember me fondly — if the things I did made their lives a little easier, a little brighter, a little more hopeful — that means more to me than any promised heavenly reward.
And unlike the afterlife, those things are real. Tangible. Happening now.
Why “Saving” Is the Wrong Verb Entirely
The funniest part (or maybe the saddest) is that these religious supremacists assume non-believers are missing something. That our lives must be hollow without their doctrine. That meaning cannot exist outside the narrow paths they walk.
But the truth is, I don’t feel lost. I don’t feel empty. I don’t feel like a problem waiting to be fixed.
I feel grounded in humanity, in curiosity, in community, in the messy and gorgeous experience of living a mortal life with full awareness that it won’t last forever.
If anything, I feel more awake now than I ever did trying to convince myself I needed salvation.
A Simple Equation
In the end, my worldview is pretty straightforward: I was born. I get a finite number of years. I hope to use them well. I hope I leave the world, or at least my little corner of it, better than I found it. And then one day, I’ll be done.
That’s not bleak to me. It’s honest. It’s human.
It’s really just that simple.