Salvation is the single most important thing a person can achieve in all of life. This is true of all salvationist religions. It might be called Salvation, Enlightenment, Transcendence, Achieving a Higher Plane of Consciousness, etc. It doesn't matter that they are called different things, they're all the same. Even though believers of each claim that their Salvation is different than the rest, they all have the same end result.
Each religion has its own method they claim is the right method. Their method is 100% effective for everyone who uses it. Other methods are usually considered wrong or at least ineffective. Something else they all share is that it is not possible to save others, you can only save yourself. But the method of salvation can be described or taught to anyone.
What really gets my goat is the fact that the word salvation even exists in the first place. Salvation from what?
Salvationists believe that humans are flawed, innately flawed. Or at least that the human experience is a test of some sort, designed to allow for achievement of higher levels of life via the salvation method, in order to transcend the human experience.
The "thinking" behind this idea of a flawed existence is based on ignorance or at least lies. Salvationism as a religion showed up on the planet only recently and isn't seen in any form prior to the past four thousand years or so.
If you look back at the beginnings of salvationism, you'll see the majority of people were living in over-crowded slums or were at least living in near constant fear and had little or no security. The ruling class was tiny and extremely wealthy while the vast majority of people were poor and miserable.
These people looked around and thought that there MUST be something better, a reason for this miserable life. And they looked "out there" or "up there" for it. Salvation fit the bill. It made sense. It felt good. A single God made sense too. It didn't matter that nowhere in all of the universe is it written how many gods there were. The gods of the time weren't cutting it, so a single God worked well for them too. One seems like such an enlightened number. Simple, powerful...less messy than many gods could be.
When they looked back in time it was easy to see that vast kingdoms came from large cities, and before that, cities with fewer people, and before that, towns, and before that, villages, and before that, many small tribes, and before that, NOTHING. It was logical that a single God created the world and created Man. Not just Man, but Man the Civilization Builder.
How could anyone have known that man had lived successfully at the top of the food chain for hundreds of thousands of years? How could anyone have known that the Earth had been here for billions of years? How could anyone have known that Man did not come into existence as a civilization builder but as a tribe dweller?
But when the truth became inescapable, the ignorance became lies and the truth was brushed into the netherworld of "prehistoric times" where it wasn't important or significant. It was just 300,000 years of Man waiting for the right moment?
Anyway, Salvationism was the treatment for misery, not the cure. Religion became "the opiate of the people" with salvationism at its core.
Man is not flawed. Man is a successful animal and is as perfect as a butterfly or a shark or a blade of grass. If this were not true Man wouldn't exist in the first place.
You can go anywhere on the planet and ask what it means to be "saved" and you'll find that you'll always be understood.
As Daniel Quinn has pointed out so well, the very concept of salvation is completely new and not at all understood by people untouched by "civilization."
Tribal peoples have no notion of sin or salvation. Life is just life like it's always been to them. They evolved into their lifestyle of tribalism the way bees evolved into hive builders...through natural selection...because it worked and was successful for them. It worked for all humans on the planet for 300,000 years before the "agricultural revolution" and the beginning of "civilization."
Tribal law is inherited law...it evolved right along with the tribe. The purpose of tribal law is to keep the tribe strong and functioning. Our laws are created out of thin air and are designed to punish and control crime. The big difference is that tribal laws don't deal with crime at all because there's no such thing as "crime" in tribal society. Crime is a product of created law and cannot exist otherwise.
While tribal people are just as selfish, cruel, rude, violent and annoying to each other as we are, their laws don't punish them for it. Instead, tribal law acts to resolve conflicts in ways which promote the health and stability of the entire tribe as well as the individuals. Notice that there are no jails or police in tribal society. Neat.
Tribal peoples don't understand crime the way we do, nor do they understand "sin" as we do. They understand right and wrong perfectly well, they just deal with it differently. But the very concept of the innately flawed human in need of salvation from the torment of life itself just makes no sense at all to them. And it shouldn't. It's as made-up as our laws are.
Oh, we've only just begun. More to come later...go back.