Christ's Atonement

[R. S. Martin]

Here Mick said:

 

The "Atonement" of Christ is second only to the Trinity in it's absurdity. I would love to talk to folks about these matters.

 

Please talk. I am interested. That Jesus' dead body made it possible for my soul to get into heaven (if I'm good enough and have enough faith and all the rest) has been a serious problem for me since I was a child. Since Christianity had no answer for that question I ended up deconverting. How about you?

[Guest Marty]

This was a huge thing with me too. I quite frequently refer to xtanity as a death cult, and on more than a few occaisions I get the response:

 

"Oh, no, xtanity is a life affirming religion!"

 

Yet these people have no explanation for why the blood of an innocent (animal in OT, god-man in NT) is needed for atonement to an all powerful god. When they say that that is how god set it up, and who am I to question it, I usually reply that I am not questioning the "plan" so to speak, but the actual mechanisim that allows innocent blood to clean me of my sins. My big question is how someone else's death can absolve me of my wrongdoings.

 

It was a big thing for me as a kid, and led me to read the bible for answers, and I found a whole lot more than I was looking for.

[centauri]

Yet these people have no explanation for why the blood of an innocent (animal in OT, god-man in NT) is needed for atonement to an all powerful god. When they say that that is how god set it up, and who am I to question it, I usually reply that I am not questioning the "plan" so to speak, but the actual mechanisim that allows innocent blood to clean me of my sins. My big question is how someone else's death can absolve me of my wrongdoings.

 

Christians tend to rely on Heb 9:22 to validate the myth that blood is required to atone for all sins.

But that's not the case at all. Other offerings such as money, prayer, jewelry, or flour can also atone.

They've altered the Old Testament regulations to suit their preferences.

Atonement for unintentional sins involves blood but atonement for intentional sins doesn't involve blood.

Even if Jesus was supposed to be a sacrifice for unintentional sin, he didn't conform to the regulations of a valid sin sacrifice as set forth by God's law.

The sacrifice must be an animal approved of for sacrifice, must be physically unblemished, ritualized by a Levitical priest, and die of blood loss at the approved place for sacrifices.

With regard to salvation, Ezek 18:20-27 states quite clearly that each person dies for their own sin and saves themselves by repenting and keeping the laws of God.

[R. S. Martin]

This was a huge thing with me too. I quite frequently refer to xtanity as a death cult, and on more than a few occaisions I get the response:

 

"Oh, no, xtanity is a life affirming religion!"

 

Yet these people have no explanation for why the blood of an innocent (animal in OT, god-man in NT) is needed for atonement to an all powerful god. When they say that that is how god set it up, and who am I to question it, I usually reply that I am not questioning the "plan" so to speak, but the actual mechanisim that allows innocent blood to clean me of my sins. My big question is how someone else's death can absolve me of my wrongdoings.

 

It was a big thing for me as a kid, and led me to read the bible for answers, and I found a whole lot more than I was looking for.

 

Exactly! It feels so good not to be so alone in my frustration and inability to accept the Christian answer. Your post is one more piece of evidence for my claim that the only people who ask this question are either outside Christianity or on their way out.

 

I take it Christians had no response when you clarified your question? If they had a response I would be very much interested in knowing what it was (unless it's just some more bible crap because that is all they have been programed to emit) because I have never seen or heard a logical response to that question.

[R. S. Martin]

Yet these people have no explanation for why the blood of an innocent (animal in OT, god-man in NT) is needed for atonement to an all powerful god. When they say that that is how god set it up, and who am I to question it, I usually reply that I am not questioning the "plan" so to speak, but the actual mechanisim that allows innocent blood to clean me of my sins. My big question is how someone else's death can absolve me of my wrongdoings.

 

Christians tend to rely on Heb 9:22 to validate the myth that blood is required to atone for all sins.

 

 

Here is Heb. 9:22 NRSV:

 

^22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

#_ftn1 #_ftnref1

It explains absolutely NOTHING! It's nothing but an unsupported blanket statement of authority. It requires a presupposition that blood pacifies an angry god and we are asking HOW THAT WORKS. We are also saying: THAT MAKES NO SENSE.

[R. S. Martin]

A principle or action that works for all people for all time MUST MAKE SENSE TODAY in the 21st century.

 

Otherwise it is not for all people for all time. Because we are people and the 21rst century is part of Time.

[mwc]

For some reason I was thinking about something similar today (a quote from ST:TNG came to me that's something like "there can be no justice when laws are absolute" which is really what started it) and I got to thinking about the absolute laws of "god" and how there can be no true justice under that system. Xians love to tell of a trial where you're sentenced but suddenly jesus rushes in a pays your "ransom" and you're set free...which truly makes no sense. I picture something more like this:

 

Judge: Do you believe I have a son and he went to Harvard?

Me: Um. Does that matter?

 

J: It might. Do you believe it?

Me: Sure. Why not?

 

J: You're acquitted.

Me: What just happened?

 

J: You believed that I had a son and he went to Harvard so I'm letting you go.

Me: What does that matter? What if I said I didn't believe you had a son or that you did but he didn't go to Harvard?

 

J: Then you'd have been found guilty and given the maximum punishment of death.

Me: Death! For speeding? Are you kidding me?

 

J: We take all crime very seriously.

Me: So the actual details surrounding my case had no bearing at all on the outcome?

 

J: Nope.

Me: Just whether I believed in your son?

 

J: That you believed I had a son and that he went to Harvard. Both of those things.

Me: Is that how you judge all your cases?

 

J: Yes.

Me: ???

 

J: Next case.

 

This god doesn't use his intellect to decide anything at all. He's just a simple decision machine. Do you believe X and Y? Yes? Then you're free to go if not then you burn. Justice looks at the evidence and decides if maybe I had a good reason to break the rules in that situation. Each infraction on its own merit. This jesus thing short-circuits the whole system. Justice does not exist in xianity.

 

mwc

[Aurelia]

This god doesn't use his intellect to decide anything at all. He's just a simple decision machine. Do you believe X and Y? Yes? Then you're free to go if not then you burn. Justice looks at the evidence and decides if maybe I had a good reason to break the rules in that situation. Each infraction on its own merit. This jesus thing short-circuits the whole system. Justice does not exist in xianity.

Not only that, but as I understand it the jury system is set up to not only judge the facts, but also the law itself. In xtianity, you have to play by the rules or burn, no questions asked. Doesn't matter if its a shitty rule or not, cause a single infraction and you're out. Damn, try questioning the morality of a rule and you're out too. Kind of a fucked up system if you ask me.

[מה טבו]

There are a lot of things that bug me about Christianity - the focus on the afterlife instead of the here and now, the ability to agonize in guilt over human foibles but feel no shame about horrible things done in the name of Josh, the arrogance, the idea of eternal damnation - the list could go on.

 

But you've hit on one of the big ones here - the abandonment of consequence and personal responsibility. Only "sinners" are responsible for our own actions, and even then it might be "the devil" making us do it. But if you're a Christian, no matter what you do, you can just go ask Josh for forgiveness, and you're completely absolved of responsibility.

 

I remember watching the 700 Club one time after Jeffrey Dahmer died. They were interviewing the relatives of his victims, the interviewer mentioned that he had become a Christian in prison. The victim's relatives tended to say stuff like, "well, if he found Jesus, I forgive him."

 

Bullshit! He murdered people, and he bears the responsibility for those crimes. Murder can't be undone. Unless self-defense was involved, then it's not something of which you can just be absolved.

 

But that was the thought of those Christians concerning Dahmer - that Dahmer, a cannibal and serial killer, was morally superior to Ghandi because Dahmer found Christ. I'm gay, and an ex-Christian. I give to people in need, abide by the law, and live a moral life. But in the eyes of these people, I - or you - or anyone else here - would be morally inferior to one of the nation's most infamous serial murderers.

 

Another pet peeve of mine concerning Christianity is the hijacking and distortion of Judaism. The meaning of sacrifice is just one thing included in this.

 

The point of animal sacrifice was not so that an animal's death could atone for sin. This was a goat herding society, and animals were property. They were currency. They were livelihood. The whole purpose of you having to go sacrifice one of your goats is for you to give up something of yours to atone for what you did. It's not for the animal to suffer - the ritual slaughter methods are designed to bring unconsciousness in 2 seconds. It's for the OWNER to have to pay (literally, some of his property) to atone for himself. The whole gist of this is personal responsibility - personal absolution.

 

Look at Yom Kippur. In the 10 days before Yom Kippur, if a Jew feels that he has wronged you in any way during the previous year, he will come to you and apologize. This is because Judaism teaches that if you have sinned against another human, you have to sincerely seek forgiveness of that person. You cannot have atonement for that deed until the situation is made right. (Thus, Judaism teaches that murder can never be truly forgiven.) In place of animal sacrifice today, people give money to charity. The principal is the same - giving up some of what you own to atone for yourself.

 

And this is where the "sacrifice" of Josh really fails the test of atonement in Judaism. There is no personal responsibility there. There is no personal loss. If nothing is paid, then no sincere atonement is made.

[Dhampir]

I want to take a stab at devilish advocacy: The blood of Christ did nothing to absolve anyone of sin; it merely paved a way through the perfection of Christ for the imperfect ones (that being us) to go to heaven, bypassing the fact that God cannot abide by even the merest unholiness. The fact that the "saved" sin just as often as the unsaved is proof that Jesus' sacrifice was less atonement, and more of a bribe, or perhaps a way for God himself to rationalize not sending everyone to hell uniformly for offending his holiness by being less so than he.

 

How's that?

[mwc]

I remember watching the 700 Club one time after Jeffrey Dahmer died. They were interviewing the relatives of his victims, the interviewer mentioned that he had become a Christian in prison. The victim's relatives tended to say stuff like, "well, if he found Jesus, I forgive him."

But this is because of the "means to an ends" that inherent in this scenario. One person killed another but the assumption is the victim was xian and now the killer is also xian so a tragedy is really a win-win. Before only one soul went to heaven but now two get to go. If the killer doesn't come to baby jesus then he was in the hold of the devil anyway and the one soul still makes it into those pearly gates while the other heads into hell (where they were going all along). This rational does cheapen this life considerably.

 

But in the eyes of these people, I - or you - or anyone else here - would be morally inferior to one of the nation's most infamous serial murderers.

Isn't this always a fun thought?

 

Another pet peeve of mine concerning Christianity is the hijacking and distortion of Judaism. The meaning of sacrifice is just one thing included in this.

This happened 2000 years ago...time to move past it. Xians today know so little about Judaism that they wouldn't know it if it bit them on the ass. After I deconverted and started to do some research on Judaism by hanging out in Jews for Judaism forums I was shocked by what I didn't know. I figured that since I had the same stupid book and xianity was just sort of an extension of Judaism (yeah, right) that it would be easy.

 

Xians don't understand the temple system. They don't understand the sacrifices/offerings (they think that they were all blood sacrifice...and you could have a human sacrifice). They think that only Jews could ever worship this god. They think the messiah can be both a king and a priest. They think lots and lots of things. Xians obviously don't know what they don't know and they don't care. It's no surprise Jews have never really been xians as we'd recognize them.

 

mwc

[quicksand]

I've argued on another board that the atonement and the "fact" that Jesus had to die is only confirmation that, at least, Bible-God does not exist, and by way of that Christianity is false in its claims. For one, Jesus dying and the way he died (if he did) aligns perfectly with the Argument from Evil Against God's existence if we posit that God is all-powerfull, all-knowning, and all-good. (ALL-PKG).

 

Therefore, the atonement is just a story about how indifferent the universe is to our suffering and it even demostrates that God can not push-back against this self-evident fact of the universe. Great emoitonal fiction - sure, and that's how these passion stories are fashioned, but that's about it.

[Deva]

The whole doctrine of the atonement is absolutley ridiculous and morally reprehensible.

 

First one must believe that human beings are sinners and condemned to eternal punishment because God finds us so depraved from birth that he evidently can't stand to be in the presence of us. Then throw in the idea of animal sacrifice, that the sacrifice of someone else (somehow that someone else is also God) can solve this problem by substituting himself for us, a problem which God himself concocted!

 

How is it that it is possible that a very young person can go straight to hell for not believing if they should die in, say, a car crash, but a criminal who has done horrible murders can convert before going to the execution chamber! The criminal is given ample time in prision before the execution to have a conversion experience ( a la Jeffrey Dahmer). The young person is not. I would like a Christian to explain to me how that is moral.

[angel.white]

They were interviewing the relatives of his victims, the interviewer mentioned that he had become a Christian in prison. The victim's relatives tended to say stuff like, "well, if he found Jesus, I forgive him."