I honestly don’t understand the central idea of Christianity, and if there is anyone out there who can explain it to me, I would appreciate it. I am talking about the incarnation and redemption. About Jesus dying for our sins. Even when I was a believer, I mostly just believed in God and didn’t worry too much about specific doctrines. When I did believe, I was OK with just this general idea that Jesus died for us, but I didn’t think too much about the logic of it. I assume at least some believers have thought about the details and it makes sense to them. Can you explain it to me?
My basic understanding is that Jesus death was necessary to save us from original sin. Original sin is a problem in the first place, of course. Why should all of humanity be condemned forever due to the choice of two people? I usually thought of original sin as more of a metaphor for our imperfect selfish nature, and in that way it’s less of a problem. But ultimately, it is God damning us. It is something he imposed. Presumably, he could lift his own curse at any time for any reason. What he goes with, in order to escape the death of original sin, is that we murder his son.
I don’t get it. Why couldn’t he just remove his own curse without the theatrics? Or if we have to prove we are worthy, how about sending his son and if we treat him nice, then save us? I still have the problem of cursing and damning being inherited–all of Adam and Eve’s descendants are damned because of their choice, and all of us today are saved by the choices of people 2000 years ago. If Jesus hadn’t been killed and we had been nice to him, would salvation be impossible? His crucifixion seems to be prophesied and preordained, so God knew it would happen anyway. Is there a reason to go through with it? If he just wanted us to believe in Jesus, why couldn’t we just believe in a preacher and healer?
Why is it that eating an apple gets us damned but murdering God saves us? What’s wrong with these priorities? I know eating the apple was disobeying God, but it still seems odd.
How is it that Jesus death saves us? God could choose whatever he wanted to save us. Why is his suffering significant? Of course, we have the problem that people like Pilate and Judas are condemned for doing what was necessary for everyone’s salvation. Did God need to suffer to have the sympathy necessary to forgive? An all knowing God must already know about suffering. It’s not like he learned something from his time on earth.
The salvation story does make sense to me if you understand a common view at the time, the idea of the scapegoat. A scapegoat originally wasn’t just a figure of speech. The Hebrews would symbollically put the sins of the people on the goat and send it out into the wilderness, thus symbollically removing the sins from the people. The similarities to Jesus are obvious. But of course, a goat cannot actually take sins with it. At best it is a symbol. How does Jesus actually remove our sins by his death? Why should what happened 2000 years ago have any affect on my sins? Why couldn’t God remove those sins without all of the bloodshed? It seems to me that the idea of the redemption made sense with a superstitious or simple view of God, but it is nonsense with a view of an all powerful God.
It seems that the redemption is one of those things that makes sense to a lot of people simply because they grew up with it and heard it repeated over and over, but is absurd when you look at it from outside. If I understood it, that wouldn’t make me believe it. But it would be nice to at least understand what it is that I don’t believe.
Tags: faith, incarnation, redmption
July 22, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Wow, this is a question whole books have tried to address. I’m not a theologian, just an everyday person learning to live trusting Jesus. One thing you say, about original sin, is “ultimately, it is God damning us. It is something he imposed. Presumably, he could lift his own curse at any time for any reason.”
I’d like to offer another perspective on this: when God created the universe, it included physical laws. It also included spiritual laws. Not “rules” laws, but “cause and effect” type laws. If I jump out of a tree, gravity pulls me to the ground. If I choose to be boss of my life instead of letting God have that role, He lets me (because He made me with free will). But the result is we’re not as close as He intended. The relationship is damaged. My choice, not His. So much not His that He goes above and beyond the call of duty to make a way to get me back.
Another spiritual law here is that holiness can’t mix with unholiness. For God, who is holy and just, to say “hey, what you did doesn’t matter, come get a hug” — well, He’d have to go against His own nature. We do that sort of thing, but He doesn’t. So there had to be a way to satisfy the requirements of justice without breaking the requirements of the love that wants us restored.
I can’t explain God, because He’s more than my mind can grasp. Same with this issue. I don’t understand original sin either, but I know how quickly I sin on my own. And I know He loves me enough to clean me up and bring me back into relationship with Him again because Jesus dealt with sin’s cost once for all.
Have you read CS Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe? Perhaps in allegory form this might be easier to understand. Not that you’d have to believe, or even think it made sense : )
I hope you find your answer.
July 22, 2008 at 4:54 pm
It never was an apple; an “apple” is never mentioned in the Genesis account. After their sin, Adam and Eve immediately searched for leaves to sew into a garment, for they were ashamed of their nakedness. Why was the covering of their genitals their overriding concern? Could it be that the illicit sex act with a two-legged serpent (Jesus/Yahshua called the religious hypocrites of His day “serpents” and “vipers”) was condemning them? Makes more sense. The tree of knowledge of good and evil has to be a being with that knowledge, and the gospels liken men to trees.
I’ve written about sin and redemption recently on my blog, “Immortality Road.” Hope to see you out there sometime at http://ImmortalityRoad.wordpress.com Kenneth Wayne Hancock
July 22, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Well you have certainly asked some deep but important questions. I will try to answer one or two.
First of all you mention original sin and wonder why all of humanity is condemned because of the choice of two people. The story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit in defiance of God’s instructions may be fact, or it may be an allegory for some other activity that they did. Whichever is the truth, we need to realize that by doing it they caused a fundamental change to themselves. It was as though the mold by which they were formed became cracked. Consequently every other product of that mold was faulty. That fault is called original sin and it affects every person who is born as a result of that mold.
Could God have made us without original sin? Yes he could, but for some reason known only to himself, he didn’t. Therefore each human being coming into the world has a bias toward sin. Instead of making us unable to sin — which would have made us robots without free will — he made it possible for us to obtain deliverance from the sin through the scapecoat which you mention.
If I wanted to pay the penalty for your sin, it would be necessary for me to be sinless first. Otherwise any penalty that I pay is for my own sin. But if there was someone who is “worth” more than all mankind and he was sinless, then he can pay the penalty for all mankind if he so desires.
That is what Jesus does for us because, being the Son of God, he can satisfy the demands of a holy God, his Father.
I hope that this very simple answer will help you to understand a little of the plan that God put into effect so that we could have forgiveness.
July 23, 2008 at 4:41 am
Redemption means literally to buy back.
When God created man and woman, they were perfect, without sin. Sin is a product of free will, of the created never reaching the fullness of the creator because at some point the independence changes focus to self. I believe this echoes what seems to be reflected in Isaiah regarding Satan’s original sin.
God created “man” for relationship. He had a task to tend the garden. I think he was even on probation. The speculation really is moot, but I think there was a chance for Adam and Eve to not disobey God, and if they did, there was eternity waiting for them in fellowship with God.
Unfortunatly that relationship was broken because of selfishness. Joanna is correct in talking about the character of God as holiness. There are only a few words that describe God in big pictures. Love is one, Holiness is another. Holiness is really the character of God. The Old Testament Law and all that really was describing what it would take to match God’s character. The Law in that sense describes God. The Law was never meant to save – it was powerless to do that because no one could fully keep it. So now we have two strikes against us. We have the sin nature that we inherit (total depravity) through Adam and Eve being the “head” of our family. We also have the acts of selfishness, pride, etc that we commit that show us we can never get to God on our own strength.
What to do? Because no man could be “perfect” or good enough to fulfill the Law, God had to do it Himself, through the incarnation (because of Love). The Law had to be fulfilled if there was going to be “forgiveness” of the sin, both the original sin as well as the acts of which all of us are guilty. So, the death of the perfect man is what broke the curse of sin – death.
And God died for everyone. This is grace. Well, what about that free will thing? That is where faith comes in. God is offering, and even hounds people to respond to His offer of grace. Salvation, though, is only applied when you recognize that you can’t do “it” (be good enough to get to God) on your own, that you need Jesus’ help (His already finished work of the cross) to have your relationship to Him restored.
Ultimately it is all about relationship. God made you, and wants to be in the details of your life. He made you for a purpose, a unique and wonderful thing. But you have the choice – to turn to Him and allow Him to “lead” you, to allow Him to sit on the throne of your life; or to keep yourself on that throne and relegate God to a place outside of your life.
Even when you accept Jesus, that struggle of who is on the throne of your life is real. At some point God leads us to full surrender, and it makes all the difference in the world.