I always had this theory that Jesus wasn’t sent here to forgive us our sins and show us God’s love for us. I always figured he was sent here for us to love him, and show God our love for Him. We failed that…miserebly. What that means exactly, I dont know. It just always made more sense to me that way.
Amen!
In that case God was being just a little unrealistic expecting a bunch of Roman polytheists to love him.
Well lets take for a moment that the miracles performed by Jesus really happened. He had the power to heal the sick and raise the dead, cast out demons…etc. What would be so unrealistic in thinking the Romans would see that power as a sign of a true God?
My own view:
Picture a God who is tired of seeing his gifts wasted, and his creation trashed. He is weary of the lack of faith. He has tried his hand directly in the affairs of humans, but after a time everyone falls back to their baser natures.
At this point He is ready to throw up his hands to the whole mess. To Himself he thinks, “I found them, raised them up, gave them eternal souls, and still they war, murder, rape and treat each other worse than the animals I rasied them up from. What must I do to show them a better way, and yet leave the freedom of will pervail?” He continues, “I know. I will send them my Son. He will walk among them and live a life devoid of Sin. He will show them that it CAN be done. That you can go thru life and love all, and make this a better place…if you just believe.”
So He sends down his Son. He walks, preaches, and miracles his way thru life. “Believe in me, and be saved” he says. Instead we are jealous, mistrust, and hate him, and in the end kill him because it is easier to kill, then to believe. In 3, or 2 1/2, he returns again to show that belief in Him is an end to death. Those that believe will have unending life, those that dont, will die. His mission accomplished he returns, and waits to see if enough of us loved him to make the difference.
End of my View.
That is how I see the Jesus story. It fits more with what I think of God then any other doctrine I have read or heard of.
Why would he appear to only a handful of people in some desolate backwater hellhole? What about all the billions of people who weren’t there and couldn’t have possibly had any opportunity to “love him?” And what does “love him” even mean?
I’m sorry, but we’re still left with the gaping logical hole that without any proof for what people are supposed to believe in or worship or “love,” then any question of punishment or reward for merely guessing without evidence correctly or incorrectly what religion is “true” is not logically sustainable. Such a system cannot be reconciled with an omnibenevolent God.
Logically, the miracles are either fictional, or the Romans never saw them ( I believe the first, naturally ). I can’t see the Romans touching someone who had actually had evidence of extreme divine favor, given the divine wrath factor. For that matter, IIRC some accounts of the Crucifixion talk about the sun turning red, dead rising from the graves and so forth; if that really happened they’d take him off the cross a lot faster than they put him on.
I wasnt trying to be “logical”, faith is not about logic, its about faith. In any case, the OP question was how is 3 days a sacrafice. My point is that I dont think it was meant to be a sacrafice, we have just been told that.
Not sure what your asking. Im assuming you are talking about the billions of people born since his death that havent “meet” Him. Since world population didnt hit a billion until 1800 or so, I will assume you meant that. In any case, I dont believe you do need to meet anyone physcially to love them. You can love the idea they represent, or how they make you feel about yourself…etc…
I agree with you in that IMHO no religion is “true”. Faith is true. Religion to me is people in power telling those not in power what to believe and how to do so.
That would take a little more Bible and BOM searching time than I have right now but I’ll try again tonight.
We’ll start with one basic one. IS the Bible the word of God? In my opinion the Bible is an amazing book worthy of study and refelction. Prayer and meditation. However, there is no evidence that it is or was ever intended to be the word of God. This is a popular tradition and myth that people who seek the truth should give up in the light of a lot of evidence to the contrary. Aside from the historical evidence that is more widely available than ever, let’s look in the Bible itself. There’s nothing to indicate it was ever God or Jesus plan that we have a compilation of writings that would be the authoratative revelation of God’s will for us. What Jesus taught was look inside yourself and seek the guidence of the spirit . The fact that so many use a 2000 year old book written by a very different culture, to make judgement calls about contemporary society is a little goofy. Christians who are basically good people pull one or two verses out of the Bible and justify prejudice against gays as God’s will. They use the Bible as a means of judgeing others religious path and choices. “I can’t find that in the Bible so it must be wrong.” I understand the desire for authority is a part of human nature but it just isn’t what Jesus taught. He taught us to seek God by seeking that loving spirit within that needs to be reflected in outr actions toward all people. How do we know when we’ve found it? Simple… what actions do you see? Acts of love, kindness, mercy. How do we treat what Jesus refered to as “the least of these”?
There is nothing in the Bible to support this very wide spread belief about the book itself, in fact if we really study the NT it becomes obvious that it is the inner spirit that we are told to seek and trust as our authority. Not any book or tradition .
The key point you are misunderstanding is how relationships work. When you genuinely love someone, you love them more than yourself. This is probably very hard to comprehend since our love is not even close to perfect. My whole life I have wanted to have kids and I know that when I do, I will love them WAY more than myself. I would gladly give up anything for them. It’s for this reason that Christ’s death is the greatest sacrifice God could give. Even more so than God’s own death if there existed such a thing.
If you read what Christ was about you would know that he was against religion. Religion is only looked on in a positive light once during the entire new testament. Christ was about love. I mean this with complete respect, but have you honestly taken a hard look at yourself? It is fairly obvious that you have experienced some tramatic events in your life and this is your way of getting back at God whom you say you don’t believe in. I mean come on, look at what you are saying. Almost everyone will agree with you on the fact that religion can be and has been used for very evil desires, but we both know that Christ brings love. You say you use logic in your thinking, yet you can’t see how strikingly obvious your attempts at getting back at your so called non-existent God are. It’s amazing to me.
You don’t understand; I’m saying that the “God sacrificed his son” idea shows that God didn’t love his son, or even care about him. I wouldn’t do that to a total stranger, much less a hypothetical son.
The moment he talked about God and so forth, he was talking about religion.
Almost all of my anti-religious feelings come from what has happened to others, not me. I assure you, I am perfectly able to feel anger at the suffering of others, and worry about future dangers.
I also notice you use the phrase “say you don’t believe in”, which sounds like you’re going for the common religious claim that you are so obviously right that nobody could possibly disagree; if I claim to be atheist, I’m obviously lying.
Monotheism is not about love, it’s about hate.
No, we don’t. You don’t “know”, and I not only don’t know, I don’t believe.
Were you under the impression I was trying to be subtle ?
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death.
You really have two options. God waves his magic wand and we are good. Obviously this would not work since we would not have free will and would be controlled. Now I know that you do not believe in free will, but since it is so easy for you to dismiss my faith, you must also recognize that you have faith in the fact that we do not have free will. Since this is a message board about finding the truth, I would hope you would at least consider the options. Especially ones that are not set in stone. Now the other option that you are hoping for is that God simply forgives us without any sort of punishment. Well as you could probably guess, this would make God an unjust God. The reason being, God would let people like Hitler kill countless people and there would be no penalty for this. Obviously this is incredibly unjust to the people who suffered. The only option is for a sinless Christ to take our place. Christ of coarse did this willingly.
I guess what you don’t know from talking on a message board like this is that I am very against “religion” as well. I don’t have a single problem with the way you speak about these religious debates. The problem I do see is that you don’t connect the dots correctly. Any Christian who truly follows Christ, can NEVER condemn anyone for anything. I am truly sorry that people have completely ruined the message of Christ and it is something I have to continually fight with. Christ got along with liars, adulterers, and even murderers. The one group of people he had a hard time with was the religious people. Mainly because they thought by following the rules they could look down on other people. Meanwhile Christ decides to take a free hit for people. Its simply not correct to assert that Christ is anything other than good. Christ says not to murder or commit any sins, and when people go do those things somehow it gets blamed on Christ? Not very good logic.
If that made any sense, you might have a point. First, it’s not God’s business to forgive or punish us, especially since he provides neither help nor evidence he exists. Second, the idea that someone could take someone’s place for punishment is just silly. It’s also completely unjust, which rather undercuts your idea that God is just.
If you believe in a god, you are religious. You do, and you are; Christ did ( unless he was an outright con man ), therefore he was also religious.
Howso?
Well, there’s a couple of passages to consider,
and
Not conclusive I know but you can see how some might read it that way.
You require “proof” before you’d love your neighbor? Someone’s a goat. 
Simple; monotheism is based on the idea that your god is the only god; which means everyone else is worships a false god/delusion/demon. As those other religions are false by definition ( as far as a monotheist is concerned ), it’s OK to destroy them; you’re just destroying lies, and you’re doing what the one and only God wants anyway. Christianity is worse than most, because of the Hell concept; since you’re trying to save people from infinite punishment, anything is justified. After all, even a lifetime of torture isn’t as bad as Hell; nothing we can do is that bad.
Really, history bears it out; monotheism has a history of systematic intolerance and unbounded aggression you seldom see in polytheisms.
Agreement.
I can’t speak for Der Trihs, but I sort of believe in free will; I certainly believe that a god forcing us to do something would be destroying that.
I’m agnostic; i’m perfectly willing to listen, and consider.
Technically, there is a third option; he could only judge some of us, for example those who follow him. However, this would indeed be unjust, so I imagine you’d disagree with it too. I think it may safely be discounted.
Quite so. It would indeed be unjust to let such a person be unpunished.
Why? God’s omnipotent, right? So surely he could just wave his hand and do it anyway? Your arguement is like saying in order for God to eat a banana, he must first peel it. He could make the skin vanish, he could make the skin edible, he could change the past so that bananas never evolved to have skin. The dudes omnipotent? Then do it divinely, instead of sacrificing your son - a somewhat callous act.
Well, people so far in this thread ( believers or no ) are still debating that.
No, if you believe in a god, you’re religious. I think what you’re saying is, “i’m against an establishment of religion, i’m against the idea of churches”. You are, however, religious.
I’m afraid I can say the same about you.
Oh, Og. The old “Believers cannot do bad! What? He believes, and is bad? Oh, well, he’s not a TRUE believer!” argument. I’m sorry, but that’s full of crap.
As am I, my friend. But I must ask you - what makes you think you have got this message right, when most of the people of the world believe they have the right message, they have the “truth”?
Yeah, that’s pretty damn creepy. I don’t recall, however, Christ getting along with such people and then they committed such offences. I think you mean, rather, that he forgave them? Well, that’s very forgiving of him. Seeing as how (presumeably) he believed they would be judged after death, i’m willing to give you this one. It seems like it would be just.
Really? The ONE group? I seem to recall he had a thing against the moneylenders, for one.
A tradition that carries on to this day. Not among all religious people, though, which is nice. And i’ll add to that that some athiests also can “look down” on people, as they have a tendency to think all religious people are idiots. It swings both ways.
He did? When? You mean his death? Oh, right, so, he took a weekend out and we were all saved. That was nice. Wait, no, hang on - he was forced to. By his dad. Right.
Why not? We’ve never met the guy. He might be a rampant homophobe and misogynist - given the times, that’s quite likely. Who’s to say what he was like, other than the bible, which, as the “marketing leaflet” of the religion, is going to miss out all the bad bits anyway?
I blame the actions of a person on that person (given that they are of sound mind and body at the time). Thus I can safely blame Christ for his actions, which created a religion which has persecuted many people.
It doesn’t sound right because it’s all made-up claptrap. It’s hard for me to believe that adults can still believe in the Easter Bunny.
Of course, if God actually existed and was omnipotent he could tolerate any sin. Presumably, a Perfect Being wouldn’t feel the need to banish mere humans to Hell just because he didn’t like the way they worshipped. C’mon, you gotta be bigger than that if you’re the Master of the Universe!
It’s such bullshit… and yet society (even those who should know better) gives it all a pass. Sad. The world will never have anything close to peace until intelligent humans can finally lead the myth-believers out of their dangerous Fairy Tale addiction.
A most excellent Christian here. –
God came to earth in order to experiene the human condition. Don’t know why He would choose to do such a thing but He did. What the hell—God does what He wants to do or He could not be God. ----------Right?
What did He learn about us? Beaucoup I think. Enough at least to completely transform Judaism into what is Christianity today.
Forget the old laws. Learn to love each other. Learn that the experiences of this life are meaningless as compared to how one deals with life’s experiences.
This world for all of us is a pretense. A sham. A relatively meaningless period of time.
But life is also a test. Do you graduate with honors ? Do you fail miserably? Do you get a gentleman’s C and maybe get to try again?
Christianity is all these things-----and more.
An omniscient God cannot logically learn anything.