What Did Jesus Do To Become Saviour?

[Medjool]

Hello, I've been lurking here obsessively lately and have been entertained and comforted by the dialogues here. I'm working on my extimony and will post it soon. There's so much rich discussion here that it wasn't until now that I felt like I needed to make my own post. But here goes.

 

Last night, my husband (who grew up with no religion at all) asked me (who grew up with much, much religion) what exactly it was that Jesus did to 'save humanity'.

 

My answer was that Jesus died.

My husband's response: what does that have to do with us?

Me: uhhh.

 

I fumbled around with the whole Jesus-replacing-old-testament-sacrifices story, which husband had never heard, and then I told him about the youth group diagram where god is on one side of a chasm and 'man' (sic) is on the other side. Then the cross comes and creates a bridge across the chasm. Which of course made absolutely no sense to him, or to me, now that I finally thought about it. (and I was a bible major? how did I miss the obvious madness?)

 

After I thought about it, I realized what a great question this was. I spent most of my life assuming an answer to this - that Jesus died to give us eternal life with god - but not really thinking through it. As it turns out, this is the question that was a big turning point in my leaving the faith. As my faith had become more and more irrelevant, I tried to boil it down to the bare essentials. The most essential seemed to be believing in Jesus' saving death and resurrection. But then...I just couldn't see how those had anything to do with my spiritual experience.

 

Am I missing something? What are others' thoughts on this?

[Japedo]

Am I missing something? What are others' thoughts on this?

 

Welcome to ex-C Medjool.

 

The church hates thinkers. Faith is not suppose to make sense and when you start trying to get it too, well you'll lose it. Simple as that. Faith requires little to no thinking and attributes all things to 'not knowing' or a higher power. Blind hope and blind acceptance is required in order to maintain faith. One can not be a devout thinker and a devout believer at the same time, the roads will soon clash and force you to take one or the other. Once you step away from that. well.. You know the rest.

 

 

Welcome again, I look forward to your anti-T.

[RIPw4]

That is the sole reason I left christianity.

[SWIM]

It would have been far more "impressive" and would have swallowed up the ENTIRE jewish religion into xtianity had he came boldly down from the cross, zapped all the romans with lightning and declared himself king. That's what the jews *expected* from the messiah, and they would have joined his *army*, this would have primarily defeated islam too. The world would have been united under one religion and still would be today.

 

It's SPIN. Plain and simple. He was defeated at the cross, and like modern politicians, xtians put a positive spin on it. The defeat on the cross was actually the worst blow to xtianity there ever was, it is only the *spin* put on it by believers that caused it to survive.

 

I believe someone stole the body, then gathered others to the empty tomb saying "look look, he defeated death". Somewhere in jeruselem there is an unmarked hole somewhere with his body in it.

[R. S. Martin]

Last night, my husband (who grew up with no religion at all) asked me (who grew up with much, much religion) what exactly it was that Jesus did to 'save humanity'.

 

My answer was that Jesus died.

My husband's response: what does that have to do with us?

Me: uhhh.

 

I fumbled around with the whole Jesus-replacing-old-testament-sacrifices story, which husband had never heard, and then I told him about the youth group diagram where god is on one side of a chasm and 'man' (sic) is on the other side. Then the cross comes and creates a bridge across the chasm. Which of course made absolutely no sense to him, or to me, now that I finally thought about it. (and I was a bible major? how did I miss the obvious madness?)

 

<snip>

 

Am I missing something? What are others' thoughts on this?

 

Hi Medjool, welcome!

 

Nope, you're missing nothing! I've been asking this question since the first time I heard the story as a child. It's GOOD to see someone else asking it. Not until I was on these forums did I see anyone else asking it and I couldn't believe it. Anyway, you might like to see the convo I'm presently having on the topic. It started in the Arena. I'll post that part here so you can see it.

 

Adapted from here.

 

My argument begins with Jesus' definite statements about the faith of a little child:

 

Matt. 18:3-4: Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

 

Matt. 21:16: Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise

 

Obviously, little children do not know all the facts about the faith but intuitive convictions about right and wrong/true and false are, I believe, in-born in some cases. I believe this is what Jesus meant. That is the basis of my argument.

 

RubySera said:

 

This is one of my strongest arguments for not accepting the theology of salvation. I was fairly young when I was struct with the ridiculousness of the idea that anyone can get to heaven just because Jesus died. The way I remember things, Mom told me about Jesus and that people hated him so much they killed him. We had no Sunday School or Bible stories or TV. All I got was what Mom told me. I might have been about 6 years old. The idea of hating anyone enough to kill them wrenched my sensibilities but it made sense on the logical level. A long time later I heard Mom tell my younger sibs that Jesus died so we could get to heaven when we died.

 

HUH???

 

It was as though someone had grabbed me from behind with great force. IT MADE NO SENSE WHATSOEVER!

 

I have no idea if I said anything out loud or what happened next. All I remember is the absolute shock with which it grabbed me for its shere illogic. I might have been 8 years old.

 

My argument is that if this was so clear to a child, surely it is WRONG! a false religion, a false doctrine, a wrong-headed idea or whatever. It is the single most important item over which I deconverted at the age of fifty.

 

"Out of the mouth of babes...." And when the truth impressed upon the child's mind cannot be erased by decades of brainwashing, surely this is a message all truth-lovers need to listen to. It should be a wake-up call.

 

I heard innumerable sermons from the age of 8 to 17 about how Jesus took the punishment on himself as a substitute that we all deserved for being born rotton sinners who God the Father hates eternally. I actually believed it at the time! It was stated over and over that Jesus died the worst possible death because God the father turned his back on him or something like that (How's that? Two gods?). Also, that since he took the punishment we would not have to die. Of course they meant spiritually, but yet they would use all kinds of dramatic examples of people physically sacrificing themselves to save others. There was some story about a train going of a cliff or something, heck, wish I could remember it. All kinds of stories with the sacrificial, substitutionary thing going on.

 

RubySera said:

 

I had meant to respond to this part of your post and got lost in the fuzzies of cat stories.smile.

 

Not a single one of those sermons addresses my question. If your kids vandalize my property, you can make it right by either giving me the money to restore it myself or you can restore it. Either way, you take it upon yourself to restore that which your kids vandalized. That is justice, fair play, whatever.

 

Now if I were one of your kids, and if you were a very stern and strict parent and found out that I was guilty of breaking the law, I might have been in fear of severe punishment from you. In some cultures you might have given me over as a slave by way of retribution for my share of the vandalization. If you valued me enough as your child so that you would give money or restore the property and allowed me to continue living with you as your child and legitimate heir, that would possibly be experienced by me as fairly gracious.

 

In another culture, such as North America, giving children away as slaves is illegal and repulsive in the extreme. I have seen where people were made to work on a contract basis to pay back what they had destroyed. That is as far as our ethics will allow us to go.

 

The Christian god obviously comes out of an ancient Mid-Eastern slave culture where the scenario described would fit all too well. Even so, where does a savior fit in? If hell is being separated from God, then I guess being handed over to the neighbour would be hell. And it would be forever (rest of life). So the analogy fits thus far. But if Dad decided to pay hard cash instead....Oh I see, Big Bro goes instead of me.

 

But according to the story he doesn't really. He just goes gets his ass kicked (dead three days) then comes back and gets to be home for eternity. Seems he just delivered the cash. Fancy way of delivering but hey! it was god's will. So the neighbour's house is still burning. (Water might have been more beneficial.) And it will be for eternity whether or not I get to spend my life there.

 

I guess this is where I'm supposed to hang up my brain and just trust and obey. Fine. I trust where there is reason to trust. But when I see smoke I have little reason to trust that there is not also danger of fire. Okay, if I want to roast weiners I am happy to see smoke; there is hope that we might get enough flame to actually roast and not just smoke, but we are talking about a home. Fire and home fit only in terms of cooking and heating. Go beyond that and it's not okay. Hell is considerably beyond that. And the story that has come down through the ages does not in the least hang together. There is no reason to trust that Jesus actually did anything helpful when he was dead.

 

I've seen pictures of the cross laid across a pit so we can cross over to heaven but I don't know where in the cosmos that is supposed to be located. If Kat can tell me about that, and astronomers can verify it, perhaps I will believe. Somehow, I will not be satisfied even if Hans's son gets healed. Sure, I will rejoice and be exeedingly glad for the healing. But can I trust Jesus to save me from hell? Not on that disjointed story!

 

I never saw it in terms of master/slave. To me it was more like the schoolyard bully is going to beat me up but someone steps in and takes the beating for me. Of course the bully is God the Father and Jesus is the person taking the punishment in this example. There are a lot of things wrong with it, and I am not in anyway defending it, but as a child it made some sense to me. I think the only reason it made sense was that I accepted the whole idea of an unseen spiritual world where things were happening that were not visible. Maybe you didn't accept that idea, Ruby. That is why Christians were able to give Jesus' death such great significance. He didn't just get his ass kicked and come to life again, because he wasn't a man, he was god. He was doing things in the spiritual world to get us right with God the Father.

 

I was told over and over that Jesus died for ME as if I were the only one on earth. I have to say this never made any impression on me since i knew he was supposed to have died for everyone else too. They were just trying to make another emotional appeal.

 

Should we start another thread on this subject?

 

I didn't find your thread until now but I started my thread on How Did Jesus' Death Bring Salvation the same day you started yours, by the looks of things. Isn't that funny?

 

They are basically the same topic. I just posted another long post on my thread that might interest you--unless you already saw all those resources. I can't provide any answers; all I can do is ask questions but if you haven't read all those websites it might give you some more ideas to play with, for whatever that is worth.

[Medjool]

Hi RubySera, I saw your post and have been following along with it, it's very insightful. And yes, it IS crazy we started the same topic on the same day!

[Neon Genesis]

This whole idea of Jesus' death saving our souls used to make so much sense to me as a Christian but now I can't understand how it ever made sense. Why did God need such a ridicilously elaborate plan to save humanity in the first place? Since God supposedly has the power to forgive others if we ask for it, why didn't God just forgive others instead of sending Jesus to Earth to die? Of course it gets even more ridicilously confusing when you consider that Jesus is God...

[SWIM]

This whole idea of Jesus' death saving our souls used to make so much sense to me as a Christian but now I can't understand how it ever made sense. Why did God need such a ridicilously elaborate plan to save humanity in the first place? Since God supposedly has the power to forgive others if we ask for it, why didn't God just forgive others instead of sending Jesus to Earth to die? Of course it gets even more ridicilously confusing when you consider that Jesus is God...

 

 

It makes no sense at all. Most myths kinda do, but this one just has too many holes in it. That's why they burned so many books, and want to censor what you see, hear and read. They want you to have *faith* and not question, because to question is to see that it truly is a fairy tale.

[dibby]

Hi Medjool. Apparently Jesus had to die because his dad was angry with certain human behaviours, thoughts and feelings. The whole thing is crazy. Even more so when you consider that Jesus is supposed to be god too. So he had to die to placate a different personality of himself!!!

 

He apparently " took our sins onto himself". How did he do that? Are sins a substance that can be placed on him? What is the mechanism by which he takes my "bad" thoughts, actions etc onto himself? How can he do that when we haven,t been born to commit any? What is a sin? The whole thing falls apart if you look closely, its absurd.

 

(Thinking about it, I don,t even really know how I ever came to believe and follow such hogwash??? What was I thinking? Or maybe I wasn,t)

 

I have experienced the divine without needing to be a christian.....so to any christians out there, What has the death of Jesus got to do with us now?

[Guest WarrantedPVC]

Yes, I don't understand this either. How can the torture and death of an innocent person be used as a "currency" to pay for things unless a sadist (or sadomasochist) is involved in the transaction?

 

PVC

[R. S. Martin]

Most of the time I can't get Christians to look at my question but here's something that has stumped a few of them and sent them scurrying for their Bibles:

 

I can forgive people without them so much as them saying sorry. Why can't God just forgive? Am I stronger than God?

 

They will say, "Uh! I never thought of that. I'll have to think about that."

 

A few weeks later they show up with Bibles in hand and smug atonement theories, and the Jews-understood-blood-sacrifice-so-it-had-to-be-that- way argument, etc.

 

I was a Christian at the time and I just wanted to throw up. I had read the Bible! I knew what was good for me so I held my tongue.

[R. S. Martin]

Yes, I don't understand this either. How can the torture and death of an innocent person be used as a "currency" to pay for things unless a sadist (or sadomasochist) is involved in the transaction?

 

PVC

 

And how can currency change the situation? I mean, why couldn't God just forgive? Why did justice have to be accomplished? He's so perfect that he can't stand sin??? So am I! There's stuff I can't stand, either, but I was forced to live with it until I was scared for life. So are a whole huge batch of other people. No blood sacrifice is ever going to make THAT go away.

 

We're told to "go get counseling" and "get help" and all that pretty stuff that doesn't really do anything but make others feel like they "did something." But god couldn't stand sin so his kid (who is also himself) had to die.

 

For God so loved the world.....Yes I know, just bear with me, there's more........that HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON

 

HUH????

 

I know what it's like being someone's kid. And I know what it's like having those people taking advantage of their kid as though the kid had no say in the matter. Exactly how is THAT a sacrifice for the parent???

 

I've seen parents make their kids work for certain friends (of the parents) in return for something the friends had done for the parents before the kids were born or when they were babies. The parents prided themselves for returning the favour, but it was the kids who had to live with and work for a nasty employer. Possibly it did something for the politics of the community at large but it sure as hell was not the parents who returned the favour--it was the kids ten, twenty years down the road. I say if there has to be payment for something DO IT NOW and let the kids pay their own way in their own day!

 

Since I as a mere human being can think things out this well and have this much moral sense, then surely God being almighty and all-knowing and all that, can think of a much better way. That being the case, it logically follows that the only possible way to get us to heaven was through Jesus' death. BUT that means Jesus' death made some physical change in either the universe or spiritual world. And it was more than just paying someone for something.

 

Okay, maybe like someone suggested, he literally took our sins upon himself and they died when he died. But that has logical complications as well, as the person pointed out.

 

The fallacy of the "faith is not logical" argument is that it is applied only to those things that actually make no sense. All other arguments must make meticulous sense--they must hang together in the tiniest detail. I am graded for it in seminary. My future depends on it. Maybe once I have my degree I can confront my professors about this discrepancy. For now I'll have to contend myself with what they feed me--at least on that front.

 

But when it comes to eternal salvation, exactly HOW Jesus saves, we are best advised to just trust God about that. I should add that my profs don't believe in an afterlife so that gives their theology a different twist, more like Amanda's.

[Neon Genesis]

Another way to think of how illogical Jesus' sacrfice is to think of something similar happening in a modern setting. Like imagine that a parent leaves a cookie jar in a location in the kitchen where a child can easily reach it and tells that child that if they take the cookie they'll get a spanking. Because the parent left it where they could reach it, and forbidding it made the cookie more desirable than before, the child naturally steals the cookie. But instead of taking responibilty for leaving the cookie in a place where the child could reach it, the parent punishes the child for their actions. But instead of spanking the child like they said they would, they change their mind and decide to kick the child out of their house. But even when the child got kicked out of the house, the parent still claims to love the child and demands for them to obey them. So years later the child has grown up outside of the house and is raising their own children to obey their grandparent.

 

The grandparent then decides to tell their grandchildren that because his child stole a cookie that they left where a child could reach it, they got kicked out of the house for punishment. The grandparent was going to spank the grandchildren because their father stole a cookie, but because of the grandparent's love for his grandchildren, their cousin Billy Bob commited suicide for them so they wouldn't have to be spanked for their father's theft. Instead the grandparent decides to let the grandchildren back inside the house because of their cousin Billy Bob's suicide that he commited out of love for them, but only under the condition that the grandchildren do not steal the cookies he purposely leaves in the kitchen for them to steal. If they were to steal the cookies, the grandparent will kick them back out of the house and years later when Billy Bob comes back as a flying zombie, the grandparent will finally decide it's time to spank his disobedient grandchildren. Now if this happened in modern society, that grandparent would at the least be locked up in a psych ward for insanity, so why does this make logical sense to Christians when it comes to Jesus?