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Helene 1 year, 9 months ago.
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I maintain a dialog with my former church within an international forum. I do this as amends for teaching harmful beliefs to people when I was a believer.
There is a poster called fccool and he presents some rather brilliant observations. One such observation was this.
Originally Posted By: fccool
“The idea that the only way for us to be “saved” from the doom that none of us wished upon ourselves but are born into this “Imperfection”, is to make the most selfish choice in the universe and to choose another person to die, instead of us, who did not deserve to die – it’s not only irrational, it’s highly immoral.”This is really damning to the whole Christian moral argument. I may not want to die in this imaginary test of loyalty, but god is asking me to make an immoral choice to be saved.
In a very direct way, by choosing to allow another to die for my guilt, I am committing sin. So therefore god is tempting me to commit sin to save my own life. In fact it goes beyond temptation to a threat of death if I do not commit this sin of injustice.
Because god is promoting sin in humanity he then condemns himself as a sinner by his own standard of justice. This makes the Christian god a hypocrite.
This presents an interesting dilemma.
Oh – this one is tempting Richard and I’ve run out of time this morning…isn’t fccool pointing out the essential Sunday School wonder that the one without sin willingly paid the price for those with it? (We can talk all about the whole sin thing) and the whole saving thing…I will pick up this thread later in the day. Cheers!
AnonymousWithin this posit, tense is important. The Christianity from which I came was a very linear Christianity. This happened, and then this did, and now we’re in this stage, and we’re all just waiting for the Rapture. There is no room under this tent for ideas of parallel universes or many universes. Therefore, Jesus died. It was already done. To believe the why of it and the aftermath story are the important aspects of the faith – not that he died. We were taught only that every time we sinned, it was like nailing him to the cross over and over again.
In the narrative from which I came, God made the decision to kill Jesus on our behalf. We had nothing to do with it – our only role is to either accept it or not. It’s already happened.
What I found troubling within that set of beliefs (and not to derail the original post’s ideas) was that an omnipotent, all loving God would kill an innocent – even if it was an aspect of himself – to “fix” things. This narrative, from within my current framework, is troubling on a number of levels, not least of which is that it falls in on itself, disproving the very concept of God that is required.
The closest one could get to challenging believers from my past in a similar way would be to ask, “If you could stop the crucifixion, saving Jesus, but damning yourself, would you?” This question toys with the depth of love a person has for Jesus, their understanding of Jesus as God and therefore, one could argue that they would not save him because he does not need saving and knows more than us and to intercede would be lacking in humility.
It all seems like emotional and mental abuse to me.
As a child I reasoned this way:
God said not to kill.
God killed.
God is a hypocrite.
This was explained away with:
God’s ways are higher than our ways.
I’m glad to hear someone say it out loud. It truly IS an immoral decision that has to be made to be “saved”. It was always one giant tangled mindf*ck to me, and I’m ashamed that I passed it on to the kids I used to lead in youth group.
Mox, we don’t know what we don’t know. I’m leaning towards “it *is* one giant tangled mindf**k.” I haven’t sorted any of this out but I don’t believe a lot of it any longer….
I have no idea why that made me feel so joyful/sorry for a second.That’s worth noticing Moxie. And good for you for noticing it!
I’ve been thinking about this all day…My issue is that GOD put that damn tree in the garden in the first place – how does THAT make sense?
But was it really a tree?
The whole premise is that we needed “saving” from the nature God gave us and the Temptation, God put there in the first place.
Well, um, it makes no sense. I used to think it made so much sense but then I stopped drinking the kool-aid and now here I am with all of you…
Well – was it really in the Bible? Do you believe The Bible? Did the translators get it wrong? Is this a Metaphor? and if so, how many other metaphors have shaped the course of human history? hmmm….
I don’t know but maybe Richard does!
If we take the Garden of Eden story literally we have two of the least experienced and naive beings pitted against the most ancient. I think how easily a small child is deceived and the gap is much smaller in intelligence. I also was fascinated with mentalists and the methods they use to create the illusion that they can read minds. I read a lot about these techniques as a kid and it is rather amazing how easily most people can be deceived.
If the Garden story was true Adam and Eve didn’t have a chance.
There a number of good reasons to realize that whoever wrote the story didn’t intend for it to be taken literally. This literal interpretation is largely the result of American Protestant Revival moments, particularly those who became popular in the mid 1800’s.
In the ancient world the serpent was seen as a symbol of healing and wisdom. You can see this later in the Old Testament where Moses is told to put a bronze serpent on a pole and have people gaze on it to be healed. This symbol is also present in the form of the Rod of Asclepius which takes its name from the god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicinal arts in Greek mythology. This was also a rod with a serpent intertwined around it.
You will find that many of the Bible stories have parallel stories in Egyptian and Babylonian mythology.
The Garden of Eden story is easily seen as an explanation for the emergence of consciousness. What is interesting is that the serpent is really the only being in the story that tells the truth. It is interesting that the Garden of Eden story suggests that ignorance or lack of knowledge created bliss. The tree was called the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This awareness would make them become like gods. This is true within the story because if you remember the gods were worried that Adam and Eve would live forever with this knowledge if they were allowed access to the tree of life. This seems odd that god originally lied to Adam and Eve when god told them that the day they ate of that tree they would die. They didn’t die and the gods actually had to drive them out of of the garden to make them eventually die.
In some views the serpent gave them awareness, but the cost of this was the possibility of shame symbolized by their sense of nakedness. We see this type of extreme self consciousness in teenagers.
In primitive cultures the serpent character is often seen as the hero of the story. This is because the serpent is wise and brings a lesson which causes the person to grow. When Daniel Everett came to the Piraha people in Brazil as a missionary he learned their language and told them the story of Jesus. They thought that Judas was the hero of the story.
So I believe the original Garden of Eden story was meant to show the serpent as a trickster hero there to teach Adam and Eve how to be conscious and independent. And it is odd that Christianity often discourages knowledge as being bad and many conservative churches are anti-intellectual. This need to keep people uneducated so that they can stay in their blissful state of ignorance.
Fortunately there is so much information available to everyone on the internet that a pretty severe form of censorship would be required to maintain Christianity’s hold on people. In the early church a systematic burning of books was carried out and if the muslim intellectuals of the day hadn’t saved the Greek mathematical and philosophical writings Christianity would have destroyed them.
It became apparent rather quickly that Christian beliefs wouldn’t hold up very long in the free exchange of ideas.
Thanks Richard for weighing in! Lots here to think about… and I was just reading the New York Times article about how the Pope wasn’t declared infallible until the 1800’s which is the same time as the American Protestant Revival. Hmmmmm so interesting…
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