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I’ll toss this your way because I have been wondering aout this lately. It seems that a lot of sin in the world is caused by biological issues. Mental illness. i believe Jesus died (but more importantly, rose) for us to show us Godde’s love. But what did he save us from?
AnonymousSpiritual death, fears, the power-grip of selfishness that manifest in very many different forms in our lives, the religious machinations of man, ourselves,..l am sure this is just my own personal observations of my walk, off the top of my head.
I believe that all the pacts that I made with shame, guilt, hatred, lust, addiction, greed, sickness etc- was for them to be able to feed on me. When Jesus went to ‘hell’ – He went to hell for us. He made Himself a meal for all those demons- they are now paid. They cannot come and feed on me. They cannot bother me.
When in Psalm 23 it says “He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” The word “table” is synonymous with ‘altar.’ He laid Himself on the altar- and let them feed on Him. I picture the table between me and my enemies (my demons) and He is laying on it- protecting me and reminding them that that bill has been paid.
Also, He allows us to live as we were created to live. We weren’t meant to try to breathe under water- but breathing air gives us life. He gives us the strength to live in such a way as to turn the other cheek. When someone slaps us- emotionally or physically- we can look them in the eye and show them the cheek with the handprint on it. We can say: “This is how you hurt me before. I’m trusting you with my heart again. Will you continue to hurt me? Or will you make it better?”
He saved us from thinking we are the judge of everyone else. When we take a grievance to the court, we put our verdict in the hands of the judge. We allow the judge to decide the punishment and fairness of the situation. God, I believe, is the only one who knows what was going on with that person that day, or why they did what they did… He is the one we can trust to deal out justice. That’s just how I see it, my opinion. I’m sure I will laugh and pee myself about some of my wrong & crazy opinions- when I find out the truth.
Not sure I know the answer to that one. I love what he says and how he treated people but the dying at the cross and raising a few days later part always baffles me. Thanks @JeniAnanda for your thoughts.
Good question! I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot recently, about the nature of sin etc and what Jesus really saved us from. I believe what Jesus did on the cross was for all of humanity, and not just those who decided to believe in Jesus, such a narrow concept condemns billions upon billions to death and I don’t see this as a great triumph I think the greatest victory for God is to bring all of his creation to him, and he did this via Jesus. I believe because we have free will we therefore have the ability to commit not just good, but evil too, as we have seen throughout history and observed in present day. I believe Jesus came to free us from the consequences of free will, allowing us to continue as free people without fear of God punishing us for the bad things we commit as a consequence of our free thought. I personally don’t believe in hell which is what led me to this conclusion, as I don’t think eternal punishment is a fitting end to anyone no matter what they have done, since there is no sense of redemption and therefore it is basically eternal vengeance and torture, which paints God in a very bad light.
This is a relevant Russell’s Teapot Cartoon. I’m on a Russell’s Teapot roll here.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lm2JI7sGwYI/SfPLv7YelZI/AAAAAAAAFHk/RcYBMNFWMA8/s1600/martyrdom.jpg
@shift I totally agree. I just can’t reconcile all of that to God is love.
Its not exactly sacrificing himself to himself, Jesus and God were intrinsically linked but they are two completely separate entities, hence the father, the son and holy spirit. And I believe it wasn’t to change anything, when God gave us free will I believe there was foreknowledge of its consequences and thus God planned from the start to send Jesus in at a very specific point in time to rid us of those consequences
Anonymous@Richard I love the cartoon. For me , it illustrates a flaw in man’s teaching about God, not necessarily a flaw in God’s thinking along these lines (not that we know what that is). As far as “what did Jesus save us from?” This question only causes me to question more.
Thanks for asking, @ParadoxPromised5.In reality from what i have been able to tell this is a personal question that in a vacuum would garner distinct personal responses. Even in this thread the responses are unique. Which is the reason I think that TLS is a vacuum itself… lol
For me, Jesus saved me from myself. I was a pretty grumpy and reckless teenager. Having Jesus in my life slowed me down tremendously — made me look at things differently, through a different filter if you will. Jesus’ death and resurrection have always been just a symbol of Christianity that I celebrated along with everything else. It was Jesus’ LIFE that saved me. The way he was with the poor, the broken, the down-and-out, the forgotten ones. That made me believe that deep down, even when I hated myself – God really cared about me — someone did. Even when I wanted to harm myself and others because of that self-hatred – Jesus was with me, next to me walking beside me — SAVING me.
I don’t need Jesus to do that anymore so much. Call it healing, or just me growing up and learning to love myself and others. See for me it was not about what Jesus DID, but what Jesus DOES that is most important. I believe he still saves.
I guess every explanation of this that I have read is rather vague. It makes more sense to me that people created a Jesus to answer theological problems from the iron age. Since sacrificing stuff on alters was big for a while, everything had some type of sacrifice narrative. Since everyone had a god who was from virgin birth, Jesus had to have this to have street cred. Since everyone had miracle producing gods, Jesus had to have miracles. Since everyone was tired of sacrificing their children to god, it moved to animals, and then to an imaginary god.
I imagine when they first started arguing for sacrificing animals instead of their children, they too might have said, “This really illustrates a flaw in man’s teaching about god.”
I don’t mean to be disrespectful of people’s individual journeys, but I had to ask myself why I was holding on to this narrative when I hit so many dead ends. As far as a story goes, it has all the great plot points, with Jesus a kind of anti-hero hero. When I looked at the story without giving it any divinity, I realized that it was all rather dramatic with Jesus not defending himself and the tragic scenes of Jesus’ death and taking care of his mother. All these appeal to what I call the Disney part of the brain. Jesus is super good and the pharisees, Herod the king, and Pontius Pilate are really bad. Pontius Pilate’s wife has a dream and stupid Pilate doesn’t listen. There’s a great earthquake and sun is darkened and it makes you ask, “How can’t these people see that this is the son of god.” “Why don’t they take him down from the cross before it’s too late?” And you have Judas the traitor who has a tragic end. And just when you think all is lost, Jesus raises from the dead and boy are those people who apposed him going to be surprised when he comes back in power and glory. You just want to stand up and cheer. I sure wanted to be on Jesus’s side.
I remember watching Christians showing this movie dramatizing the life of Christ in India in small villages and you see everybody crying in audience because it is so unjust what is done to the nice Jesus person. And we have the over the top bloody Passion movie by Mel Gibson based on the vision of a 19th Century nun sister Catherine Emmerlich.
I remember as a kid making up stuff I needed to be saved from like talking mean to my brother or not taking out the trash or being late or some other trivia. This needing to be saved raises trivia to the level of eternal damnation. I don’t really feel like I need saving from anything. I have things I would like to improve on, but that’s what makes life interesting.
Like many things in life, it’s great theatre.
@Shift Its not exactly sacrificing himself to himself, Jesus and God were intrinsically linked but they are two completely separate entities, hence the father, the son and holy spirit. And I believe it wasn’t to change anything, when God gave us free will I believe there was foreknowledge of its consequences and thus God planned from the start to send Jesus in at a very specific point in time to rid us of those consequences
Your view on this is certainly more elegant and I can see the appeal. This points out the reason Christians developed the doctrine of the trinity, which I have to admit is an extremely creative way to retain Christianity’s monotheism since 3 gods would suggest poly theism.
I would have two questions.
How would I know this is what god planned?
Is this the best idea a super brilliant all knowing god could come up with?
AnonymousI think I believe very similarly to you @John and since I choose to believe that God is all knowing and all powerful, I have to agree with @Shift about it being planned to a great degree and in all moments under the control of God and his Angels.
@Richard, I love how you slam God by calling him super brilliant. lol
I think being able to hold onto a philosophy of love in such a violent world, is amazing. Jesus allows me to do this. I think the story of Jesus, like the story of other savior figures, is and has been successfully used to encourage the individual to at least spiritual growth, lol. Lots of times I can’t seem to see what God has planned, this is where the trust in past events comes in handy, lol. I think God is too gigantic for our minds to get a good handle on, transcendent as God is and all.
And one more thing I know Jesus saved us all from, is a me that did not decide to chose love over anything else, that is a huge thing! What kind of messed up, even more violent world, would we be living in? In saving my world, Jesus saved more than me.
In answer to your questions.. The fact is, we don’t know if that is what God planned, all we can do speculate logically based off what we already know about God from the life of Jesus and perhaps from other areas of the Bible. And well how else would deal with such consequences without breaking free will? God very well could just dissolve the sin from everybody ever just like that but then that’s just infringing on our freedom, its inception and negates our ability to make a choice. If we are not allowed to be in control of our own destinies then we are merely just God’s puppets. It had to be done another way, a more personal approach, a way that allows God to experience the sin that humanity causes first hand, to acknowledge it, and to destroy it by using Jesus. We could spend all day asking why things happened as they did, and if that is the best this all-powerful God can come up with, but if God does exist then yeah, that is indeed the best God came up with. And if God exists then God is all-powerful and indeed, that was and is the best possible way. Basically its a moot point, especially considering that questioning the actions of God as being unrealistic isn’t really a basis for disproving its existence.
@Richard As far as a story goes, it has all the great plot points
I see what you are saying but at the end of the day, Jesus did exist, and he did do the things that the New Testament claimed. There is far too much historical backing going for it to decline it, as bizarre as the story is. The fact is, history has many aspects of extraordinary events that have been recorded that you have to take seriously because there is no reason to doubt the validity of the source itself. For instance, Pliny the Younger’s letters to Rome have been studied consistantly by historians as valid documents for the time, especially in relation to the Empire’s attitude to Christians and how it changed over time. But then one letter appeared whereby Pliny talked about a residence that had apparently been haunted, some ghostly figure was seen carrying chains around and no one dared go back in. So he hired a ‘ghost detective’ to go in and flush it out, and the entire operation was recorded, the ghost was indeed found and ‘set free’. Its completely out of the blue and bizarre, but it comes from the testimony of a person who has been incredible reliable from a primary sources perspective. Are we to believe or disbelieve his ghostly encounter?
The difference with the New Testament accounts, is that you have four separate testimonies, written at four different times in different countries, all based on eye-witness testimony, all accounting to more or less, exactly the same thing. Then you have Paul and Peter’s letters afterwards, the accounts of the early church, all testifying exactly the same thing as recorded in the synoptics. They weren’t written hundreds of years later either, but within decades of the event itself so you can’t classify the accounts of mythological by a long shot. Sources outside the Bible further testify the existence of Jesus, for instance the Roman historian Tacticus who confirmed that he existed, that people referred to him as the ‘Christ’, and that he crucified, and that somehow Christianity flourished after that which he couldn’t make sense of that time. The accounts of Jesus do seem perhaps fantastical, but you have to read it from the context of the time. Jesus wasn’t seen as a great hero when it happened, most of the areas were Roman Pagan or Jewish and both hated him, Christians were still very much in a minority and even uttering his name would have had you arrested. There was no great shock to the Jewish authorities after Jesus had risen because they flatly denied it, they claimed the body was stolen and many Jews still protest that to this day. We can perhaps only see it as this great hero story now because Christianity expanded as it did, and its developed over a very long period of time, we have theology and apologetics and now we fully understand what actually happened and why it was important, and its been incredibly glamorized over time, especially with films like Passion of the Christ. But at the time, there was nothing glamorous or heroic about it, it was a very dark time to be a Christian.
@Shift Ancient writers had a proclivity to make up fantastic stories. The reason we don’t believe them is because we have no modern evidences of these claims that are reliable. We don’t automatically believe stuff because someone wrote it down. It doesn’t matter what their reputation was. The human person is easily deceived.
We have all kinds of god stories that never made it. The one thing Christianity had for it was that it was the state religion of the Roman Empire. You basically have a sect of Judaism combined with various Sun god narratives and you come up with the Roman Catholic Church. There are so many solar references to Jesus including being called the Light of the World, The Bright and Morning Star, his birth on the Winter Solstice where the old sun dies and the new sun begins, his transfiguration in which he shown like the sun, and others.
If you want to read an analysis of this you can go to this link.
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/jesussunexcerpt.html
@Shift Basically its a moot point, especially considering that questioning the actions of God as being unrealistic isn’t really a basis for disproving its existence.
It would disprove the rationality of such actions. I find the claims to Christianity to be irrational. If God is irrational then maybe he exists, but I would still disagree with god. This line of reasoning is used to justify almost every religion, however violent or irrational. Your religion may not be harmful, but the line of reasoning you present is also used to justify violent religions.
I have come to the point where I believe rationality informed by empathy is the best path to a better world. Vague understandings of stuff I need to be saved from seems like an unneeded layer of fear.
@Richard The Roman Empire was very important for the spread of Christianity, but it still spread like wildfire and gained incredible popularity before then, the Roman Empire didn’t properly convert until the middle 4th Century. And this faith spread when its founder was executed for everyone to see, all this after he claimed he was the son of God. If I were a follower of Jesus at the time, and I saw him executed I think I would consider him a fraud and flatly deny that I had any part in it. That’s what anyone with even a modicum of common sense would have done, there is proof that the disciples did exactly that. But for some reason, Christianity flourished way before the Roman Empire got its hands on it, and that was at a time when it was very, very dangerous to be a Christian. The historian has to ask these questions, and to me, the thing that makes the most sense of the situation is that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, as crazy as it is, because that is what history tells us happened, and it accounts as to why so many Christians suddenly appeared and suddenly were willing to die for Jesus.
And I’m aware of the sun God and Pagan references to Jesus but all these connections were made way after Jesus’ life and way after the accounts of his life were written. All the attributes of Paganism made to Jesus was a direct result of the Roman Empire converting, whereby they stole/assimilated Pagan traditions to make it easier for the various areas of its Empire to convert. So why did all these other Pagan God stories fail when Christianity didn’t? The Roman Empire played a part in sustaining it yes, but there is clear evidence that the faith was in full flow through much of the continent before the Empire convert, hell North Africa was recorded to be around 90% Christian before the Empire converted. Why do you think Christianity flourished as it did when Jesus was basically proven to be a fake when he was executed?
And you again imply that those who believe in God can’t be rational but they can, and they can certainly be empathetic. I think your past experiences with religion has colored your entire perception of belief in that belief and religion are two sides of the same coin but its just not true. You can have faith and not be afraid, you can have faith and not adhere to religion, you can have faith and still be perfectly logical and rational about it. You need to understand that different people here have come from completely different experiences, and that your experiences with religion isn’t necessarily the same as everyone else’s. When you humble yourself to this level, you will start to see why people believe what they believe, why there others who don’t agree with you on certain levels and why that’s not a bad thing. To me, the various religions of the world, and various beliefs of the world just confirm to me that God exists, and that everyone human being has this knowledge inside them, and its expressed in each individuals desire for truth, to know who we are, where we came from, and the great question, why. This is why I can see the logic behind Universal Reconciliation, in that everyone religion is right to a degree, in that it is an expression of the ultimate search for God from different perspectives.
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