I have always had a few problems with God sending Jesus to die for our sins. If we have sin, it is because we failed to adhere to God’s laws. We lied, killed, etc…
But since God made those laws, why would his Son need to die for him to forgive us? Couldnt he just forgive us?
I have often wondered if the scriptures and prophecies were not perhaps interpreted wrong. Maybe instead of dying for our sin, Jesus died because we sinned. Perhaps God sent his Son here not die but to live for us.
Perhaps Jesus wasn’t sent to show us not how much God loved us, but how much we could love God. There were so many chances and opportunity to save Jesus, but no one ever took them. I mean Jesus came out and said “one of you will betray me”. Didn’t anyone think to question that? Maybe ask a few questions of the apostles? Perhaps an inquiry of sorts would have been in order?
Time and time again they had a chance to save Him, but thru cowardice, ignorance, or just plain indifference, they failed. Jesus preached nothing but love for your fellow man, but at the end nobody loved him enough to save him and he died. I think God wanted us to save his Son, not watch him die. To me, dying proves nothing as everything dies no matter what you do. But how you live is totally up to you, and I think that’s what Jesus was sent here to show us.
So we walk around now thinking (well Christians) “I believe in Jesus, I am saved” when in reality Jesus is watching us thinking “Stop being happy I died, I loved you, you should have loved me and helped me to live”.
Anyone else ever have this thought or is it just me?
p.s. if you don’t believe in God please don’t bother posting to say this is all crazy since there is no God, obviously that would be the case, so no need to post it.
I am no expert on Christian doctrine, but if Jesus was not supposed to die, then how was he going to come back to life after 3 days?
I thought the fact the Jesus rose from the dead after 3 days “in fulfillment of the scriptures” was one of the most important teachings of Christianity.
I think I am just adding to the OP’s question here. I am curious as to what others would say about this as well.
True. But those scriptures were written years after the fact. It would seem to me that if I realised I let the one true hope of man die on a cross, that I would make it seem that he was supposed to do so. That he really didnt die, but arose again.
Firstly, the “prophesies” you are talking about are very controversial. Many theologians think the Gospel writers did a little pos hoc fiddling with the narrative to make it look like OT prophesies were being fulfilled. And one significant prophesy, ie that the Messiah would be of the house of David, clearly was NOT fulfilled.
I think you just have to accept Christ’s death to appease God for the sins of Mankind as an article of faith. If you can’t accept it, then Christianity is probably not for you.
Yeah, I always wondered about that myself. I was always kind of incredulous at the idea of God being able to make a sacrifice. I mean if you’re god, what do you lose or gain out of anything ever? You have everything, and if you don’t you can create it out of nothing.
I always thought that it was more a test for Jesus to prove to himself that faith could conquer everything, even death. It was entirely personal. The fact that it’s ripples affected so many people are a testament to how powerful one man’s personal struggle can be for the rest of humanity.
To me when Jesus says “I am God” I think that everyone is. I don’t like it when Jesus is elevated to this level of unattainability. I think the story loses all relevance when that happens.
I disagree that religion and logic have trouble mixing. If it isn’t logical, keep searching. I think the point of faith is that you keep striving when your own logic fails you, and to trust your intuition. Tossing out logic is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Well, I was raised jewish, but I can not help noticing that the christian bible can be interpreted every which way. Scriptural support for the OP can be found with one of the three contradictory accounts of his last words when he said:
Other verse could put weight behind on the idea that he was meant to be a great teacher, and not to die, but I would prefer not to flood this post with verse after verse. Besides which, as other have said, you are not a good christian if you do not conform to the popular teachings. Submit! Submit!
How did you come to that conclusion? Even skeptics and liberal theologians agree that Psalm 16, Psalm 22, Psalm 69 and Isaiah 53, for example, were written well before the coming of Christ. (Some would suggest that the Psalms in question refer to David, rather than the Messiah; however, since these passages also refer to a resurrection, I do not believe that they are referring exclusively to David.)
There is speculation that Jesus the charismatic prophet, and those who followed him, rather expected the disruptions he caused in Jerusalem to herald the End Times, that God would soon swoop in and sort things out, and that through His divine intevention, Israel would be restored, with Jesus as its annointed ruler. Obviously, things didn’t pan out that way. The resultant crisis in the Jesus movement his death caused wrought some of the radical theological shifts in belief about Jesus’ role as Messiah, such that the word is essentially redefined in the Christian context. None of this happened overnight, and the evolution of the Jesus cult was to some extent syncretic, a product of the cultural melting-pot that was Roman Palestine. Jesus the martyr was conflated with Pagan deities, perhaps especially Mithras, and so it goes.
It’s an interesting idea, anyway. Unfortuantely, like all of these ideas, there’s scant evidence to provide much in the way of proofs. The Jesus cult as a failed prophetic movement transformed by crisis and syncretism is as good as any other, I suppose.
None of those are Messianic prophecies and none of them are about a “resurrection.” Nothing in the Hebrew Bible says anything about a Messiah dying and being resurrected. There never was any such predictive scripture.
Well, except in the obvious sense in which all of us, being mortal, are supposed to eventually die. But not then, not as a consequence of his endeavors and people’s response to them.
Jesus of Nazareth appears to me to have been engaged in a strategic spiritual action which, over time, was juxtaposing the spirit of the law with the letter of the law in situations where the two were in conflict, situations which he was deliberately seeking out so as to compel that conflict. That his central message was “do good to each other, forgive wrongs done to you, share what you have with others, love your enemy, etc” is, I think, inarguable, but close behind it was the message that the law in and of itself was not God but merely an attempt to put the true essence of God’s will for humankind into words. “I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it”, he said, but the fulfillment was to take the form of causing people to perceive the God behind the laws rather than to be rule-followers. He had a particular itch for the kind of people who tallied up how many Torahlogical brownie points they had earned and made sure everyone else knew it, while not in actuality being very nice people to other folks, and, if anything, an even bigger one for the subset of them who did their dead-level best to establish themselves as the spiritual authorities within the community.
Given that, I’ve always figured the intention was to make it plausible and reasonable, on paper, that he should be executed, while juxtaposed against that, the moral truth, apparent to everyone involved, would be that it would be a horrible and reprehensible thing to do so. He kept escalating that kind of showdown and racked up a growing tally of technical violations that were incurred in the process of doing genuinely good things for people, and this was just the latest escalation. Of course he did not intend that they would kill him! The intention was that once again the point would have been made, this time on a capital scale, that one’s loyalty is to the spirit of the law and that someone whose behavior is actually such that they are doing the “work of God” is to be seen as such even if on paper they are technically violating rules that (under at least some available circumstances and interpretations) would indicate that they should be put to death.
I don’t find it hard to read that story between the lines even though the tales were written by people who believed otherwise.
If you haven’t read it, I’d highly recommend it. Ehrman is one of the better pure writers on this subject and one of the most accessible to a lay audience. Even if you don’t agree with all his ideas (and personally, I’m not sure I agree with his apocalyptic take on Jesus) he is at least entertaining and is probably the best I’ve seen at laying out the basics of NT scholarship without becoming tedious and without becoming overly obsessed with his own opinions.
Actually this would depend on what scriptural interpretations you are referring to. The old testament jewish messiah had no mention of rising from the dead. Jesus would not need to rise from the dead to prove that he was the messiah
No, I haven’t read Ehrman, and I probably should. I’m pretty much reciting from my memories of lectures that are approaching 15 years old now (egad!), back when I was studying Biblical literature. As you well know, it’s not a new concept, but it would be interesting to brush up, especially if the book is written in a style that’s not too taxing on my poor aged brain. Thanks for the reference.
Theoretically, why would an all powerful god still be unable to make choices? If he is unable to make a choice or sacrafice, when man even can, that would not make much sense.
If God wants to make a sacrafice to make a point, or to work towards some goal, then that certainly seems like it would be his choice to do so. As for what would he gain, as I say he may be making a point to man, or trying to achieve a goal regarding them. You must remember that christian doctrine teaches that man has free will, so God can not force man to do anything.
Sure. One of the best qualities about Ehrman is that he’s completely un-pedantic, a very quick read and he actually has a sense of humor. His books have the feel of breezy lectures from a cool college prof (which is not surprising, I guess, since that’s what he is). It’s not work to read him, which is one of the reasons I recommend him.
His dying shows that sin has consequences. His resurrection showed that He conquered sin and we can too. If there were other ways to be forgiven, Jesus died for nothing. It does say “I lay down my life, no one takes it from me.” Sin causes death, that was the way around it, in fact, some believe, those at the edn of time will not die, but be bodily ifted to Heaven.
Diogenes, methinks you will grasp at any excuse to knock christianity.
Calm down Scott, other people can handle it. Other people can…
Aw, hell. I’m going for it.
Last time I looked, there was a non-sense idea that there was such a thing as “original sin”
“God” created the idea of sin, so he could erase it. Alternatly, the writters of the bible could not have invented “original sin”, and thus avoide the need for him to die.
Good Egg, methinks you will grasp at any excuse to repeat the party line.
Define “sin” and explain why it has “consequences.”
How does it show that?
If there are not other ways to be forgiven then God is not good. It would also mean that God is not all powerful because it would be setting a limit on who God could or could not choose to forgive. If God is good then forgiveness cannot ethically depend upon a belief in an unproven story of an illogical “sacrifice” 2000 years ago. If that means Jesus died for nothing then so be it. It doesn’t mean he lived for nothing and it doesn’t invalidate anything he taught.
How? And what is “sin?” And why can’t God stop it from causing death without needing to be appeased by a human sacrifice?
Around what? Around God? Why does God have to find a way “around” his own rule?
Not believing in Christian salvation theology - and explaining why - is not the same as “knocking Christianity.”
The death and resurrection of Christ was the main point of His mission. If He did not die, there would be no resurrection, and hence no destruction of death.
That Christ died the way He did was because of our sinfulness and blindness. If He had been welcomed with open arms and hearts as the messiah, and every person on earth had believed in Him, He would still have died, to remove the stain of death from humanity.
