I think you meant to write “it.” How hard it was. 
I agree it’s hard to see the necessity of it. According to Christian belief, God made the rules and he has sole control over them. So if he wanted to change his rules, he could have just done it. It’s hard to see why he needed to send Jesus to Earth to be crucified to accomplish anything.
The best explanation I’ve ever heard is that Jesus was sent as an apology. It was God’s way of saying “I realize I was overly harsh in my judgment. And to show you that I “get it” I’ll come down to Earth and let myself be crucified.”
Here’s another question for you though. Why did God wait to send Jesus? God’s omnipotent, right? So from the moment he created the universe, he already knew what was going to happen. At the moment he was charging Adam and Eve with Original Sin, he knew he was going to regret doing it and change his mind. So why didn’t he stop right then and not do it?
Cool story bro.
Moved from General Questions to IMHO.
samclem
I always figured that the non-Jews were just really thick and couldn’t figure out how to do what God wanted and so He sent down Jesus as a sort of “here, let me SHOW you!” type thing.
So it was a lead-by-example thing? The message we were supposed to get was that God wanted us all to arrange to have ourselves crucified?
If that was the intended message, I guess I’m just as happy we misunderstood it.
FWIW I am a Christian.
Yes, lead by example. But not to have ourselves crucified - that is ignoring Jesus’s life and only focusing on his death. His death was God’s love for us. His life was to show us by example how to live. WWJD all the way.
And this is the point where non-Christians ask WTF?
Okay, I can accept when a cat drops a dead mouse on a the living room carpet as a sign of love. But I expect more from God. Flowers or a box of candy would have been nice. But nobody asked for a crucifixion so there’s no reason for God to give us one and say he did it because he loves us.
The idea is that, by suffering and dying, God showed that, even though he lets bad things happens to us, he knows how bad it can be, and he’s not asking us to go through anything he’s not been through himself.
Furthermore, as I said, without the death, he would not feel justified in granting mercy, and thus would still be the vengeful God of the Old Testament.
(The whole justification thing is my way of explaining the idea of an omnipotent God having rules for his own behavior).
BTW, there are alternate interpretations. One book I want to finish describes God coming to Earth as his attempt to atone for his past sins. He can’t really die, but he can at least go through the worst death imaginable at that time. I can’t find the name of the book in a quick Google search, but it was recommended to me here on the Dope, so I’m sure someone else will bring it up.
Its like what Jehovahs Witnesses believe about Jesus.
Actually, the Witnesses regard Arius as sort of a precursor. The difference is, I think, is that Arius taught that Jesus earned Divine titles & being worshipped with the Father, whereas Witnesses honor Jesus as Lord but do not worship him alongside the Father Jehovah.
Moved IMHO --> GD.
(bold added)
Worse yet, it appears that God is a slow learner. After doing that, he went and destroyed the world (or much of it) in a wrathful flood, and then promptly regretted that too.
But this fits in better with the apology theory I mentioned.
I can understand the idea that forgiving us for original sin was a sign of love. I just don’t see how the crucifixion itself can be seen as a sign of love.
Mormons, as well.
According to the Nicene creed - an ancient statement of faith believed by almost all Christians - Jesus is eternally begotten of the Father, not made. Theologians have claimed that the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is an eternal expression of creative-ness and perfect reciprical love and community. So God did not “create” Jesus for a pupose; the Son is an inseparatable part of God that has existed eternally and was present and active in creation.
Strictly from the view of Christian theology, this is a decent summary of the Ransom Theory of atonement, which was the prevailing theory among the early Church fathers regarding Christ’s sacrifice.
Medieval theologians didn’t like this theory. It seemed ridiculous to them that (1) Satan would ever have a “justified” claim on humanity–being the embodiment of evil and all–and (2) it requires God to be both in debt to a lesser being and act deceptively, which seem to contradict his nature. Thus, they developed the Satisfaction Theory: It is humanity that owes a debt to God for original sin (rather than Satan having “won” the power of life/death in the Garden of Eden). There are theological arguments that clarify that humanity can neither satisfy this debt, nor can God simply forgive/ignore it, therefore Christ’s voluntary sacrifice acts as a substitute for this debt.
The substitution theory, I believe, is the conservative view of the atonement in most Christian churches, though other theories (e.g. the Moral Influence theory) have been proposed by more liberal theologians. And don’t ask me to defend any of this–my knowledge comes from a youth spent foolishly studying this stuff…