Nobody who does an act of power in my name will be able to turn round and speak evil of me, for whoever isn’t against us, is interested in us. For if anyone gives any of you a cup of water to drink in my name,just because you’re Christians, amen!—I swear to you they’ll never lose their reward.—Jesus, Mark 9.39-41 KWL
As part of Jesus’s teaching about the strange exorcist who was using his name to throw out demons, Jesus continued: When people have respect for the name of Jesus, and because of this they have respect for those who are “of Christ” (i.e. Christians, as I translated it), they’ll get recognized for it. And they’ll never lose this recognition.
As I said last time, Christians regularly misinterpret this verse. Mostly because it’s a very tricky idea. You see, Christians have this idea—taken from scripture, so that’s why we believe it—that God’s judgment is very binary. By “binary” I mean just as a binary switch is either off or on—and there’s no “partly on,” ’cause that’d be on—you’re either saved or not; you’re either forgiven or not; you’re either in the Kingdom or not; you’re either destined for heaven or not. There’s no third option.
Yet here, what Jesus was talking about are people who aren’t Christians. Like the strange exorcist. He was using Jesus’s name, but he wasn’t following Jesus. (Yet.) He was seeing success when he used Jesus’s name, which is why Jesus figured he’d be unable to turn round and demean Jesus’s name. And in Jesus’s next statement, he says those who respect Jesus’s name—and respect Jesus’s followers—will get an eternal reward. But they’re not Christian.
This is why so many interpreters immediately leap to the conclusion they are Christian. The strange exorcist was a Christian; these folks who are hospitable towards Christians are Christians; they’re all Christians, because that’s the only way they can receive an eternal reward. Because clutching God’s certificate of recognition as you’re standing in the middle of the burning lake of sulfur, is gonna be so twisted—so we just can’t imagine God doing such a thing. Yet at the same time, these aren’t Christians, so what’re they doing in the Kingdom?
(No, this is not where the “third option of purgatory” came from. Purgatory, in those churches which believe in it, is for Christians: Those of us who need our sin entirely purged before we can enter God’s presence clean, must go through purgatory. It’s not for pagans who were almost good enough. Read Dante’s Inferno: The almost-good-enough pagans are in the first circle of hell, which is a nicer hell than the rest, but still hell, and they lament God’s absence.)
The interpretation I lean towards is that these folks are pre-Christian: The Holy Spirit is strongly pushing them towards Jesus, and it’s only a matter of time before they give in and make the decision to follow him. In the meanwhile, they’re not yet in the Kingdom camp. They like Jesus, and are interested in Jesus, and are interested in his followers too. But it’s still before they take their great big leap into the Light.
Since God already knows where they’re headed, he’s already seen fit to bless them with God-experiences. Some of you, before you came to Jesus, had a few of them, or even had a lot of them. Some folks are just obviously marked for a Christian destiny. The rest of us Christians can see it—and some of us are just going squirrelly with impatience, ’cause we want pre-Christians to just take the plunge already! But all in God’s timing. Meanwhile, God preemptively treats pre-Christians like they’re his already—’cause from his point of view, they are. (It’s a predestination thing.) That’s why they have the same experiences as Christians: As far as God is concerned, there’s no such thing as a pre-Christian. There’s just those who are his, and those who aren’t. Yeah, pre-Christians, from their perspective, haven’t made the choice yet, but from God’s, it’s happened already.
So he doesn’t discriminate. Pre-Christians get blessed the same as Christians. Or corrected, same as Christians. Or—and this is a controversial view, but we see it all the time—supernaturally gifted same as Christians. Like the non-Christian exorcist in this story. Like a lot of “psychics” who don’t realize whose power they’re really working with, and once they find out, they become Christians. Certain Christians object to this idea, ’cause to their minds, God sees time like a human: First you’re not a Christian yet, and then you are, and then God can turn on the blessings tap. Or they figure before God turns on the miracles, we have to get our theology right—as if perfection has ever been a prerequisite for grace. But God sees our lives all at once, and deals with us in that way. And good thing he does! He’d give up on us, if all he were looking at was our sinful current existence, and not our perfected eternal existence.
Once we understand this, the idea of non-Christians whom God blesses, is not at all a problem. They’re not Christians yet. But God isn’t finished with them.