Christian Salvation Is Heinously Unjust

[fishbob]

Yes, this is true.
Why would you have a problem with it?

Edit to add: with one qualification, Jesus died for everyone's sins. Just to clarify a bit.

Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine

or Patti Smith's.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxygqSTO1lQ

 

[Ethnikos]

Now, for the specific case of Jesus, why does his death atone for anything? How does his death save us from death? Doesn't even writing such a self-contradictory thing give you a headache? Wouldn't living a full life of service be a far more compelling example of a life well lived?

You are probably bored already before I even say anything and I can't blame you because I have been saying basically the same thing on this forum for a long time. The word atonement, apparently does not strike a feeling of awe in you and would not be an affective literary device to use to sway you. I grew up in a religion that were big on the atonement theme though it was a little thin on those specifics of how it works exactly. There was a Day of Atonement, I was told about which would correspond with Yom Kippur. There is a place called the atonement plate corresponding to Martin Luther's Mercy Seat, or the throne of God on top of the Ark of the Covenant. On it the blood of the goat picked by drawing lots was sprinkled. All this was held to be symbolic of and foretold the sacrifice and atonement done by Jesus, and the subsequent ushering in of the New Testament.
The problem is with all this is the inability of people to stop with the analogy and they go further into a literal one to one correspondence in their explanation of it.
The popular preaching concerning Christ seems to be that there is sin, all have sinned, the penalty for sin is death, Jesus died and paid for the penalty which the demand of could not be avoided because of a greater cosmic law or something. The problem comes when an attempt is made to substantiate all of this theory other than a few "proof texts". You can find verses about how Jesus died to set us free which do not spell out how that works exactly. There is no clear description of the process other than this interpretation of the taking away of a bill, where the preacher says that in its place is a note which says, "paid in full". The listener is expected to have a mental picture of a drop of blood for every sin that he paid for. this probably works for Protestants who do not have a background where they just do a certain prescribed ritual and that takes care of any worries about sins and penalties.
What I am preaching is forget that and the satisfaction Jesus made to the Law, is his sinless life.

 

[Ethnikos]

Again, what is the principle here that explains death as redemption for others?

Redemption is another one of these loosely defined words like atonement. Again, the visualization of a price being paid and there is a verse that says, You were bought with a price, the implication being that of course the only acceptable payment is in the denomination of blood. There is a ransom in the O. T. where you pay but no one pays with human life. Other commodities are accepted as a form of payment.
An alternative explanation would be the one I mentioned earlier. If you were kidnapped and held for ransom, could you pay for your own release? You would have to be released first, then go about collecting the sum demanded. It doesn't work that way and someone free to move about would have to do that for you. Jesus was the one free enough to do something for all those held in the bondage of sin.

 

[Ethnikos]

How does his death save us from death?

Evil exists, that part is pretty clear.
There is that problem of evil I found out about on this forum.
My explanation is a god was assigned this planet and maybe not just this planet but any planet people lived on, and he was serving the role of god for anyone meeting a god or wanting to know a god for whatever reason.
At some point the God who created the universe and had theses various gods serving different functions, understood that this god over all people was being corrupted by having such an exalted position and in the absence of a seeable god, this lower god could think of himself as the most high god. This apparent god of the internal affairs of the universe was given warnings from the one actual supreme being to stop it. He refused and just continued on as he had been gradually more and more, headed. The supreme being could not just kill the god of the world without some negative repercussions so he quarantined him to one planet as a type of exile, to prevent a universal infection of his devious nature into all the lesser gods.
This person on this planet would be who we would call today Satan and he saw the writing on the wall that he was going to end up being done away with so instead of repenting decided to take hostages hoping to force God not to kill him. The idea being that if he could get all mankind to defect from God to Satan's camp God would have to relent on the whole death thing, at least for Satan's case, which being Satan was all he really cared about anyway.
During all of this, there was another person who was somehow the son of the Supreme being who cared about the future of all these people and decided to do something about it. He set aside his god attributes and became a human being born in an ordinary sort of way as in vaginal birth from a woman of this world. Somewhere along this road, or maybe all along, there was a spark of awareness in this Son of God that at one time he was something other than a normal person and was for all intents and purposes, God. Not actually being a god at this point but retaining a spiritual link of communication to his Father God, the son was able to maintain an existence on this planet and living in this world without having committed a sin that would have warranted a death penalty.
Satan eyeing the son, Jesus with contempt and envy, wanted to claim him also as a hostage and tempted him by being offered a godhood in his system. being frustrated in these attempts Satan turned his tactic to murder along with his claim to taking possession of his person on account of being a member of this accursed race.

 

[Ethnikos]

So what does death mean in his case?

There are more aspects to this situation than is possible for me to explain.
Satan is the accuser of the people and what creates a fear in people of not just death but of what may lie beyond. If Satan could be killed, that would eliminate a lot of that problem. One possible way to make killing Satan feasible in terms of possible blow-back on God, is if it was revealed, plain for all to see, how evil he really was and deserving of death he was. His killing of Jesus by instigating the power elite of his day to take action against him would be pretty good evidence. Jesus would have to actually be killed for this to work properly.
Another aspect is the acquisitive nature of Satan in demanding penalty for everyone else if it could be possibly fair to penalize him. Satan would have demanded that Jesus would die like any other since they were this corrupted and sinful people. Jesus took that burden upon himself of carrying the curse, as undeserving and faultless as he was. Accepting that made it impossible after that to make the same accusation, but again it involved his actual death to work properly.

 

[Ethnikos]

Wouldn't hanging around and working for whatever one believes in do one helluva lot more for humanity than just tipping over?

Dying allowed Jesus to be resurrected from the grave and to take on an immortal form of a high spirituality suitable for the demands of living constantly in the heavenly realm. Christ could also assume a lot of the duties he held before the incarnation as the baby Jesus.
He would be seated on the right hand of power at the throne of God and direct events from the spiritual capital of the universe. Then the spirit would be directed by him in such a way to be the most beneficial to mankind. The risen Christ could represent us in the matters of blessings and also to intercede in the judgements being held to make determinations on such things as rapture and that sort of thing if you are inclined to view things in that way. Not everyone is on the same page on that part. There is a verse that says judgment will begin in the house of the lord. Whatever critical assessments need to be made, Christ could be involved in.

 

[psionl0]

Luke 17:3-4

Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.
And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.

It appears that Jesus is telling us to forgive others every time they apologize - whether the apology is sincere or not.

I find no evidence in the bible that God will apply the same standard to us (apart from Matthew 7:2). In fact, most churches will teach you that your sins won't be forgiven unless you genuinely repent.

Yet another example where the bible can support any view you want and, if not, you can ignore the bible altogether if your own message sounds nicer.

 

[CriticalSock]

There is this life, and afterwards, a judgement. Jesus did not die to make you immune from judgement, as in not having to appear. We have to give an accounting for what we did with the opportunities we had to do something good.
I don't know about abasement. Do you mean groveling or worshiping?
The only worship God is interested in is trying to be better persons, to not be shameful representations of those who would make a claim to being of God.
That's one of the commandments, thou shalt not take upon yourself MY name in vain.

You seem to be taking an ambiguous text and making definite statements about it. How can you be so sure that your conclusions are the right conclusions to draw from the shifting sand that is the bible?

Before I gained my freedom I was taught that Jesus died to balance up the perfect life that Adam threw away in Eden. A perfect life for a perfect life, balance is restored. A different conclusion than yours, but how to decide who is right?

My conclusion was that if there was a loving god then he wouldn't provide his divine word in a form that could be interpreted to the extent that Catholics, Protestants, Mormons (maybe) and Jehovahs Witnesses could all base their beliefs on it.

In short, it was the bible that disproved the existence of god to me.

 

[SezMe]

Ethnikos, thanks for taking all the time. I've read them quickly but I'm pooped, it's late and so I'm going to hit the rack. I'll read them more carefully tomorrow.

 

[Pup]

I will start with this because I can give a short reply to it.
People die and are tortured every day for no good reason at all so what happened to Jesus physically is not so extraordinary in itself.
It would be nice, maybe, to think that for once, one of these events could be of some use, somehow.

Well, that about sums it up. When one's particular leader gets convicted and killed for no good reason, other than annoying the authorities, it's "nice to think" that his death was special, rather than accepting the fact that he was just another in a long line of dissenters who got stomped by the state, for whatever reason.

And thus was born a 2,000-year-old myth, building up one guy's death into what it would be nice to believe.

 

[Ethnikos]

You seem to be taking an ambiguous text and making definite statements about it. How can you be so sure that your conclusions are the right conclusions to draw from the shifting sand that is the bible?

Before I gained my freedom I was taught that Jesus died to balance up the perfect life that Adam threw away in Eden. A perfect life for a perfect life, balance is restored. A different conclusion than yours, but how to decide who is right?

My conclusion was that if there was a loving god then he wouldn't provide his divine word in a form that could be interpreted to the extent that Catholics, Protestants, Mormons (maybe) and Jehovahs Witnesses could all base their beliefs on it.

In short, it was the bible that disproved the existence of god to me.

I do present a negative and I ran a couple threads on another forum to encourage Christians to challenge me on it, that they do not have to go to a judgment, or that they go to a special judgment only for Christians where there is no chance, in that type of judgement, to be found guilty enough to go to Hell, or anything. That would be in reference to the line you quoted, "Jesus did not die to make you immune from judgement, as in not having to appear."
The second Adam is a theme I have discussed many times with Christians and seems to be the one thing that is not so controversial. I did not mention it because so far we have not gotten into a discussion of the concept of "original sin".
The different religions have outside sources which in some cases supplement the Bible to greater or lesser degrees. I was limiting my (previous to the postings on this thread) discussions to what could be supported using the Bible as the reference document.
Anyway, I am not using the people on this forum as guinea pigs to test new, out-there theories. These are the results from a lot of earlier testing.

 

[Ethnikos]

Well, that about sums it up. When one's particular leader gets convicted and killed for no good reason, other than annoying the authorities, it's "nice to think" that his death was special, rather than accepting the fact that he was just another in a long line of dissenters who got stomped by the state, for whatever reason.

And thus was born a 2,000-year-old myth, building up one guy's death into what it would be nice to believe.

A lot of what goes under the heading of Christianity I would categorize as wishful thinking.
Mine may fall under that, too.
I don't wish for the harm of others for the crime of not being philosophically correct.
We all need to tap into whatever resources that we have, even if it is "yourself", and be good, by whatever standard you define "good" because we will be called, somehow, before we pass to wherever we go from here and it will be based more on what we do, over what we say, as in professing a particular belief. The belief that matters is the one that there is a bad and a good, and I believe it is better, when possible, to choose good.

 

[Ethnikos]

Luke 17:3-4It appears that Jesus is telling us to forgive others every time they apologize - whether the apology is sincere or not.

I find no evidence in the bible that God will apply the same standard to us (apart from Matthew 7:2). In fact, most churches will teach you that your sins won't be forgiven unless you genuinely repent.

Yet another example where the bible can support any view you want and, if not, you can ignore the bible altogether if your own message sounds nicer.

That's called, the benefit of the doubt.
God will have conclusive evidence on the day of judgement to make an accurate determination.
I try to have a philosophy in harmony with the Bible but I do skip an awful lot of the Old Testament for the obvious reason that there is a New Testament that supersedes the old. We use the old to understand what the new is, but not to do a reversal of parts we want to cherry-pick with stuff that seemd ok enough, before.

 

[Cainkane1]

Join the jehovah witnesses. If you blow it in that religion you just don't wake up after you die.

 

[tsig]

That's called, the benefit of the doubt.
God will have conclusive evidence on the day of judgement to make an accurate determination.
I try to have a philosophy in harmony with the Bible but I do skip an awful lot of the Old Testament for the obvious reason that there is a New Testament that supersedes the old. We use the old to understand what the new is, but not to do a reversal of parts we want to cherry-pick with stuff that seemd ok enough, before.

Why?

 

[CriticalSock]

I do present a negative and I ran a couple threads on another forum to encourage Christians to challenge me on it, that they do not have to go to a judgment, or that they go to a special judgment only for Christians where there is no chance, in that type of judgement, to be found guilty enough to go to Hell, or anything. That would be in reference to the line you quoted, "Jesus did not die to make you immune from judgement, as in not having to appear."
The second Adam is a theme I have discussed many times with Christians and seems to be the one thing that is not so controversial. I did not mention it because so far we have not gotten into a discussion of the concept of "original sin".
The different religions have outside sources which in some cases supplement the Bible to greater or lesser degrees. I was limiting my (previous to the postings on this thread) discussions to what could be supported using the Bible as the reference document.
Anyway, I am not using the people on this forum as guinea pigs to test new, out-there theories. These are the results from a lot of earlier testing.

A wide range of conclusions can be supported using the bible as a reference document. There's a Sunday Heroes sketch:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=70IAwHTzrHI

(I hope that link works, I can't test it here at work)

My argument isn't whether the blood\wine, flesh, bread statements by Jesus are literal or metaphorical, but rather why would a loving god allow any ambiguity?

Any discussion on Salvation or Atonement in Christian beliefs will always spiral into disagreement about interpretation. I can't see any point in a loving god allowing that scenario to develop. I can see an ancient text written by men playing out in exactly that way however.

 

[pakeha]

Originally Posted by dafydd View Post
Jesus didn't mention me in his will.

That's alright. You can still appeal to him to become a beneficiary.

Haha! That sounds like the basis for a successful 419 scam!

 

[Ethnikos]

@critical sock
the link works
checking it

edit to add: having a Bible may create more consistency than not having one.
Language can have ambiguities and hard to avoid, especially considering the lapse of time.

 

[Cayvmann]

This is why there are so many that left their practices and there are so many other sects all seeking the real truth.
The real truth is, the church is within you, you won’t find it behind four walls, we all have it with in, even atheists who practice real morality.
Christianity does not = Catholic obviously for many reasons ask an orthodox.
All churches should start with we are Christians first, not the other way around.
Does not mean that some that follow that form of faith aren’t real Christians.
Just because a man says your absolved doesn’t mean squat, judgments of men are like the dust and that’s in the bible.
The dog in that picture is more of a Christian than that priest.

Just substitute preacher for priest, in the story, what's the difference? It does happen in other churches/denominations... No True Scotsmen, or True Xtians

 

[Ethnikos]

Why?

Fundamentalism test?
The Bible is generally accepted among Christians as being authoritative.