As for the blessing-gesture . . . No, the early Church would not have survived long!
Lady Whiteadder
Chair? You have chairs in your house?
Blackadder
Oh… yes.
Lady Whiteadder
Wicked child! (She hits Blackadder) Chairs are the invention of Satan. In our house, Nathaniel sits on a spike.
Blackadder
And yourself?
Lady Whiteadder
I sit on Nathaniel. Two spikes would be an extravagance.
If God had truly died, then there could be no Resurrection,of course if he put some kind of rule ahead of time that he would come back, because if he were dead he couldn’t really bring himself back to life. Jesus seemd to think of himself as the psalmist was quoted, All men are gods and the son of god, He backed this up according to the writer of John.
I am amazed at the extraordinary habit of focusing on one passage to the exclusion of everything else Jesus said about himself- in the very Gospel you keep citing. It is very clear in the Gospel of John that Jesus’s view of himself is, if he is not equally God with the Father, he is the closest created being to God & is unique in that way from the rest of humanity who can only come to God through Jesus. That very Psalm is an indictment of leaders who should be representing God & a reminder that they are also fallen, mortal & under God’s authority.
Have you ever noticed that Protestant churches use the symbol of the cross by itself, while the Catholics always have the crucifix with the figure of Jesus still on it?
My interpretation of that has been that Protestants focus more on the resurrection, therefore the empty cross, while Catholics focus on the suffering. The move The Passion of the Christ is a very Catholic message.
So if my interpretation is valid, the answer to the OP is that, at least in the US, most Christians do focus more on the resurrection as opposed to the crucifixion, since most US Christians are Protestants.
I disagree. Regardless of whether one believes he could have stopped it at any moment or could have adjusted the events beforehand to prevent it or whatnot, God very specifically chose to endure the events. Regardless of what happens after death which, as Christians believe, isn’t final for us either, then I don’t see how it’s meaningfully different.
But there’s an aspect here that I think escapes a lot of people. Time has no meaning to God, and it has no real meaning in death either. That is, the amount of time that he was dead is significant to us, as it was relevant to prophecy and simply as we experienced it. However, from the perspective of the dead, it might as well have been an eternity or a second. So the idea of being dead for a weekend to a being that oversees the billions of years of creation as, relative to us, already has passed, and the indeterminant time remaining, an comparison we draw is utterly meaningless in that frame of reference.
All of that said, I personally focus primarily on the life and teachings of Jesus as, though I believe his death is very significant, it is meaningless without the reference of everything he did up to it. I do think it is important for the obvious spiritual implications, but without the life and teachings, we’d have no way of understanding what it meant, how it applied to us, or how to live our lives. It serves as a culmination and pivotal moment of putting it all in perspective, but it’s ultimately the entire package, and it’s those lessons that continue to offer us opportunities for growth and understanding.
I woudl also point out that while, as God, he may known something, as Jesus he was often confused, worried, and clearly not terribly pleased with the idea of dying. It hurt. A lot, and he very much would have preferred to avoid it.
I can understand. [Some] Rollercoasters terrify me. I know what I’m doing when I get on one. I can enjoy the experience. But on most there’s that moment of sheer terror, when I’d give anything to be damn near anywhere else. The shock of it frightens me, I start to have doubts about the skills of the engineer who designed it, the competency of the men who made it, and the sanity of the people who ride on it. It’s only my faith in their abiltiies which keeps me from vomiting and pleading for mercy.
That’s my understanding as well. I used to visit a Lutheran church that had a beautiful stained glass window depicting the crucifixion. The pastor explained that someone had donated it when that part of the church was being renovated, so they felt obliged to use it, and they realized that it was crafted in such a way that it also seemed to be depicting Christ’s ascension to heaven. Ever since, the pastor said he has found himself having to explain why there is a crucifixion displayed in a Protestant church.
My interpretation was always that it’s because Protestants prefer simplicity in church furnishings and dislike anything smacking of idolatry – venerating images of saints, venerating an image of Christ, it’s all the same.
No, I’m saying his death was not unique. But rightly or wrongly that is the impression I get from Christians who talk about it.
That is your intrepetration,Jesus backed this up, when explaining that the Pharisees fathers were called gods, so he was asking why they were accusing him of blasphemy,when he referred to god as his father.He said many times, My father and yours, taught them to say “OUR FATHER”, nothing about sons by adoption!
Actually your God didn’t make much of a sacrifice compared to the sacrifices he had humans suffer, A few hours on a cross,(shorter than the other two crucified with him). And some people suffer much more for many days, weeks, even years,some an entire life time.
He had the power to stop it at any time he chose,In my estimation it would have been a bigger sacrifice to live with out the knowledge of a ressurection, as many people do. Plus it was a choice, most humans do not choose to suffer. There is a big difference, and since he was supposed to have created the people with the flaws that they have, it is his fault they have them. If he knew all things ahead of time he could have created them so he wouldn’t have had to come and die for them in the first place.
Most christians don’t like to focus on things Jesus said and did, because those go contrary to what most christians believe. Jesus was anti-death penalty, believed in free health care, told people to help the poor, and told the rich that they should sell everything they own. You never hear sermons preached on these topics in most churches. It’s embarrassing, so they concentrate on dead Jesus. Because dead Jesus can’t open his mouth.
In deed! He also is to have said," Love your enemies, do good to those who harm you by doing such you heap live coals upon their head",I don’t remember the direct quote, but he also is quoted as saying, if you are just good to those who care about you etc. what good is that? Even the Gentiles do that, Of course these are not his direct words but the gist of the quote.
Jesus was supposedly a god, so he wouldn’t have felt any pain anyway.
He would have merely felt a tickling sensation in his palms when they were nailing him to the cross, and then he got to go home. BFD. No worse than an average Friday workday for anyone who’s not the son of god.
He was both God & Man. All the accounts seem to say he felt it quite a bit…
You mean like, Mel Gibson’s movie?
Jesus was certainly not (according to standard Christian belief) “a god.” He was God (with a capital G), but he was also fully human.
I realize this is standard christian nonsense that everyone is taught in Sunday school, but you realize it makes no sense, right? It’s like saying “this shape is fully a square, and it is also fully a circle.” Even getting three billion people to parrot that line incessantly doesn’t make it true.
I’m confused - surely you agree that God is a god?