James Baldwin on sin and salvation

...you can glide through the Bible and settle for the prohibitions that suit you best.
The prohibitions that suit the fundamentalists best all involve the flesh.
And here I must, frankly, declare myself handicapped, even, or perhaps especially, as a former minister of the Gospel.
Salvation is not precipitated by the terror of being consumed in hell: this terror itself places one in hell. Salvation is preceded by the recognition of sin, by conviction, by repentance. Sin is not limited to carnal activity, nor are the sins of the flesh the most crucial or reverberating of our sins.