Monday 22 December 2008

John 3:16


"3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

I'm sure we are all familiar with this passage. But, how many of us have thought about what it really means? An omni-max entity created beings that are fallible and therefore can't live up to the standards he set for them and do bad things (sometimes at his bidding no less) and the only way he can think of to forgive them is to father a child and have it be tortured....and somehow this makes sense?

What twisted mind decided that torturing one person for the "sins" of another would make everything OK? Why is god so keen on torture anyway? He creates hell to torture those that don't measure up, then makes sure that no one measures up. Then, he says, "Sorry that I have to torture you in hell for eternity, but I'll make it up to you by torturing my son." "Sorry that you aren't perfect, but I'll make it up to you by torturing my son." As if that makes anything better?

Of course, looking back we can see what was going on. The Jews had practiced ritual sacrifice of animals for a long time before this. It was believed that one could cleanse one's soul by offering up an animal to one's offended god. (Actually, this was not simply a Jewish custom, but was quite popular.) Xianity just took it one step further, by offering a sacrifice of a human and/or a living god. But we know that sin transference is not reality, so why do Xians still cling to these myths?

(Note: before anyone starts using the paid ticket example, fines are different from criminal activity or "sin." So, before you start to put that in the comments, think twice please.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Xianity just took it one step further, by offering a sacrifice of a human and/or a living god"

I agree that this probably was the case in that region in the world. But isn't interesting that we had people like the Mayans who were already practicing human sacrifices to gods well before jebus.