Salvation Lies Within

Yesterday afternoon, I went and saw The Shawshank Redemption at the movie theater. It is one of my all-time favorite movies, so when I found out they were doing a special showing of it on the big screen, I knew I had to go to it! I’ve seen the movie dozens of times and know it so well that I found myself reciting lines in my head right before they were said in the movie. But there were a couple of lines that stood out to me with more prevalence this time through.

At one point in the film, Warden Norton comes and inspects Andy’s prison cell. He notices Andy clutching a bible by his side and remarks that he is glad to see him reading it. Just as the Warden goes to leave, he reminds Andy that “salvation lies within”…..meaning within the bible. Of course the irony of this quote is revealed later when Norton discovers that Andy has been hiding the rock hammer he used to dig a tunnel out of his cell with inside the bible. But the phrase “salvation lies within” took on a different meaning for me. 

While I am preparing to be initiated into the Catholic church and do believe that salvation comes from God and his word, I also believe that it comes from within us. God created human beings and both blessed and burdened us with the gift of free will. All of the wisdom and holy words in the world can be preached to us, but at the end of the day, it is our choice whether we choose to believe in or follow those words and convictions. When we are confronted with challenges in life and everything we know and put trust in crumbles around us, many people put their faith in God. And sometimes that’s all you can do. But I don’t think enough people put trust in themselves.

Each of us is stronger than we will ever realize.  God might always be at our side, but He isn’t going to do all of the heavy lifting for us. That is our job.  We are the ones who have to fight through the difficult things, avoid the temptations, rise back up onto our feet after we’ve fallen. God is our sturdy foundation, but we are the house that must withstand what life throws against us. 

By being baptized at Easter I will be granted the promise of eternal life. But I had to first choose that that was what I wanted. That’s where the second key line of the film comes into play.

At the end of the film, Andy escapes Shawshank Prison and has to climb 500 yards inside the filth of a sewer pipe to reach freedom. He “crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side,” was the line that struck me at the end.

I would like to say that my decision to get baptized came out of some beautiful epiphanous moment involving rays of sunshine peeping through the clouds and something wonderful happening that made me realize that life is so much better than I ever imagined it could be. This was not the case. The reality is much more comparable to Andy’s  journey through a tunnel of shit water. 

My journey to getting closer to God involved moments of devastation, loss, heartache, failure, sin, and disappointment. Looking back now, every single one of those moments should’ve been something that pushed me away from God rather than pushing me towards Him. What made the difference was what lay inside me. I had to make the decision about how I wanted to walk away from certain situations and what attitude they left me with. I had to decide that I wasn’t going to let any of the bad things that happened break me. I had to choose to take the ugly things and make them beautiful. I had to see the difficult moments as tests from God and be an over-achiever on them like my school tests and not fail. God was at my side through all of that, but I had to choose to be saved. I had to do the suffering and believe that I would be better for it at the end. 

One day in my RCIA class, we were asked to pick a picture from a collage on the wall that best depicted our faith journey. I picked an elephant attempting to climb a very steep hill. If I had to pick again, I would choose the picture of Andy Dufresne after he climbs out of the sewage tunnel and throws his hands up into the air in the pouring rain. He crawled through a river of shit and found himself being cleansed by the rain on the other side. It is important to be a person of faith and trust that God will grant you salvation when you reach the other side. But first, you need to seek salvation in yourself so that God knows how much trust you put in His creation.