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After a lifetime steeped in traditional Christianity, I still don't "get it".
HOW did Jesus being condemned to the unjust death of a criminal, "fool" Satan and "free us" of our "sins"?
All the supposed explanations I've read, don't make it clear HOW exactly one caused the other. I understand it was not "transactional" and agree with that; but then WHAT was it and HOW were the powers defeated? They are still going at it, unabated, after all.
The Resurrection of course, was a major miracle, but others had been raised from the dead before, so even that wasn't entirely unique.
I still "believe" and that won't change as I know better than to rely on my own very limited understanding; the same way I "trust" science for medical and other mysteries beyond me. But I wish the whole deal made sense to me.
If anyone has some "dumbed-down" explanations and please, not just Bible verses. That won't help, but some original thought might. Thanks.
My understanding of the Atonement has evolved over the past year or so. For a very long time, I believed in a kind of "watered down" version of the idea of the concept of "Substitutionary Atonement," which teaches that Jesus took upon himself the sins of mankind, thereby freeing us from having to endure the punishment ourselves. I say "watered down" version because my denomination has never used the colorful language that implies that God's wrath over our disobedience could only be placated by such a sacrifice. Instead, we have focused on Christ's willingness to suffer and die for us out of His compassion for us and the desire that we not have to endure any punishment for our disobedience.
While I have always been deeply grateful to Jesus Christ for His desire to suffer in our place, for several years I was really bothered by what I saw as the pointlessness of it all. Yes, it would have saved us from a lot of agony (emotional agony perhaps, but agony nevertheless), but what would it have taught us? What would we have learned from having an innocent person suffer in our place? And would it have even been fair? Is this something a "just" God would do? It certainly didn't seem fair to me, unless the whole point of the punishment was to satisfy God's desire to know that somebody had paid for the sins of mankind and the debt was therefore paid. Retributive justice has its origin in the Protestant idea of Substitutionary Atonement, and it's not what Jesus' Atonement was ever intended to accomplish.
I read a book recently that was the culmination (maybe) of my long process of searching for answers that would be satisfying to me. One paragraph reads as follows:
"A subject who defies his king threatens the king's sovereignty. A vassal who disrespects his ruler undermines the ruler's authority and offends his liege lord. Judgment and punishment must follow. This is the unmistakable, but perverse, way in which Christianity has long taught of God, sin, and obedience."
God does not feel threatened by our disobedience and is not concerned that the wicked might usurp His power. He loves us unconditionally and virtually everything He does, He does out of love for us. He sees our sins as wounds and He wants to heal us. He wants us to be "at one" with Him again, and that's what "at-one-ment" accomplishes. We can never ever enjoy the existence He wants for us as long as we hate one another! Jesus Christ came to teach us how to love. That was the primary focus of His mission. It wasn't to suffer so that we wouldn't have to; it was to show us by His example how to avoid becoming "wounded" in the first place and then "healing" from the wounds we managed to incur in this often harsh world. The second commandment is "like unto" the first and "greatest" commandment, which is to love God. It is to love our fellow men as ourselves.
I do believe that Jesus Christ gave us His life for us, but not in the way the doctrine of "Substitutionary Atonement" explains it. Jesus taught, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He not only taught it; He lived it. He didn't have to die on the cross in agony. He could have lived out His life and perhaps performed many more miracles and changed many more lives in the process. But He chose to demonstrate the love He had for us by practicing what He preached. Unfortunately, Christianity as a whole has missed the point.
After a lifetime steeped in traditional Christianity, I still don't "get it".
HOW did Jesus being condemned to the unjust death of a criminal, "fool" Satan and "free us" of our "sins"?
All the supposed explanations I've read, don't make it clear HOW exactly one caused the other. I understand it was not "transactional" and agree with that; but then WHAT was it and HOW were the powers defeated? They are still going at it, unabated, after all.
The Resurrection of course, was a major miracle, but others had been raised from the dead before, so even that wasn't entirely unique.
I still "believe" and that won't change as I know better than to rely on my own very limited understanding; the same way I "trust" science for medical and other mysteries beyond me. But I wish the whole deal made sense to me.
If anyone has some "dumbed-down" explanations and please, not just Bible verses. That won't help, but some original thought might. Thanks.
My understanding of the Atonement has evolved over the past year or so. For a very long time, I believed in a kind of "watered down" version of the idea of the concept of "Substitutionary Atonement," which teaches that Jesus took upon himself the sins of mankind, thereby freeing us from having to endure the punishment ourselves. I say "watered down" version because my denomination has never used the colorful language that implies that God's wrath over our disobedience could only be placated by such a sacrifice. Instead, we have focused on Christ's willingness to suffer and die for us out of His compassion for us and the desire that we not have to endure any punishment for our disobedience.
While I have always been deeply grateful to Jesus Christ for His desire to suffer in our place, for several years I was really bothered by what I saw as the pointlessness of it all. Yes, it would have saved us from a lot of agony (emotional agony perhaps, but agony nevertheless), but what would it have taught us? What would we have learned from having an innocent person suffer in our place? And would it have even been fair? Is this something a "just" God would do? It certainly didn't seem fair to me, unless the whole point of the punishment was to satisfy God's desire to know that somebody had paid for the sins of mankind and the debt was therefore paid. Retributive justice has its origin in the Protestant idea of Substitutionary Atonement, and it's not what Jesus' Atonement was ever intended to accomplish.
I read a book recently that was the culmination (maybe) of my long process of searching for answers that would be satisfying to me. One paragraph reads as follows:
"A subject who defies his king threatens the king's sovereignty. A vassal who disrespects his ruler undermines the ruler's authority and offends his liege lord. Judgment and punishment must follow. This is the unmistakable, but perverse, way in which Christianity has long taught of God, sin, and obedience."
God does not feel threatened by our disobedience and is not concerned that the wicked might usurp His power. He loves us unconditionally and virtually everything He does, He does out of love for us. He sees our sins as wounds and He wants to heal us. He wants us to be "at one" with Him again, and that's what "at-one-ment" accomplishes. We can never ever enjoy the existence He wants for us as long as we hate one another! Jesus Christ came to teach us how to love. That was the primary focus of His mission. It wasn't to suffer so that we wouldn't have to; it was to show us by His example how to avoid becoming "wounded" in the first place and then "healing" from the wounds we managed to incur in this often harsh world. The second commandment is "like unto" the first and "greatest" commandment, which is to love God. It is to love our fellow men as ourselves.
I do believe that Jesus Christ gave us His life for us, but not in the way the doctrine of "Substitutionary Atonement" explains it. Jesus taught, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He not only taught it; He lived it. He didn't have to die on the cross in agony. He could have lived out His life and perhaps performed many more miracles and changed many more lives in the process. But He chose to demonstrate the love He had for us by practicing what He preached. Unfortunately, Christianity as a whole has missed the point.
Nice post, I have come to similar conclusion .... these are things we need to think about and discover for ourselves, but they are not just for ourselves we need to share with each other as well
My understanding of the Atonement has evolved over the past year or so. For a very long time, I believed in a kind of "watered down" version of the idea of the concept of "Substitutionary Atonement," which teaches that Jesus took upon himself the sins of mankind, thereby freeing us from having to endure the punishment ourselves. I say "watered down" version because my denomination has never used the colorful language that implies that God's wrath over our disobedience could only be placated by such a sacrifice. Instead, we have focused on Christ's willingness to suffer and die for us out of His compassion for us and the desire that we not have to endure any punishment for our disobedience.
While I have always been deeply grateful to Jesus Christ for His desire to suffer in our place, for several years I was really bothered by what I saw as the pointlessness of it all. Yes, it would have saved us from a lot of agony (emotional agony perhaps, but agony nevertheless), but what would it have taught us? What would we have learned from having an innocent person suffer in our place? And would it have even been fair? Is this something a "just" God would do? It certainly didn't seem fair to me, unless the whole point of the punishment was to satisfy God's desire to know that somebody had paid for the sins of mankind and the debt was therefore paid. Retributive justice has its origin in the Protestant idea of Substitutionary Atonement, and it's not what Jesus' Atonement was ever intended to accomplish.
I read a book recently that was the culmination (maybe) of my long process of searching for answers that would be satisfying to me. One paragraph reads as follows:
"A subject who defies his king threatens the king's sovereignty. A vassal who disrespects his ruler undermines the ruler's authority and offends his liege lord. Judgment and punishment must follow. This is the unmistakable, but perverse, way in which Christianity has long taught of God, sin, and obedience."
God does not feel threatened by our disobedience and is not concerned that the wicked might usurp His power. He loves us unconditionally and virtually everything He does, He does out of love for us. He sees our sins as wounds and He wants to heal us. He wants us to be "at one" with Him again, and that's what "at-one-ment" accomplishes. We can never ever enjoy the existence He wants for us as long as we hate one another! Jesus Christ came to teach us how to love. That was the primary focus of His mission. It wasn't to suffer so that we wouldn't have to; it was to show us by His example how to avoid becoming "wounded" in the first place and then "healing" from the wounds we managed to incur in this often harsh world. The second commandment is "like unto" the first and "greatest" commandment, which is to love God. It is to love our fellow men as ourselves.
I do believe that Jesus Christ gave us His life for us, but not in the way the doctrine of "Substitutionary Atonement" explains it. Jesus taught, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He not only taught it; He lived it. He didn't have to die on the cross in agony. He could have lived out His life and perhaps performed many more miracles and changed many more lives in the process. But He chose to demonstrate the love He had for us by practicing what He preached. Unfortunately, Christianity as a whole has missed the point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Meerkat2
Nice post, I have come to similar conclusion .... these are things we need to think about and discover for ourselves, but they are not just for ourselves we need to share with each other as well
As a fellow pilgrim, I don't understand atonement theology either. I don't reject it - - how can you reject what you don't understand? The standard, orthodox explanations of it make no sense, either rationally or morally. I'm not going to review the arguments because you already know why they fail. Each theory demands pain for pain, blood for blood. It is difficult to think about atonement in those terms while reading the Sermon on the Mount.
Even if the mainstream theories about atonement are wrong or incomplete, it is impossible to deny that there is great evil in the world and in ourselves; and damn it, we don't know what to do about it. I take it as an article of faith that God does know what to do about it. I don't understand the solution, but God does. For a Christian, that means that in some mysterious way the death of Christ on the cross, whether mythologically or factually, is key to God's solution.
Religions are mysteries. One who understands his religion doesn't understand his religion. That doesn't mean that religion gets to be rationally or morally absurd. We reject such things, like the ungodly theories we hear about atonement. The correct answer will not be irrational. Pretty sure, though, that it will be non-rational. Sorry I can't be more clear than that, but I'm in the dark, too. Let me know if you find out any more about it, will you?
Just curious; You say "The standard, orthodox explanations of it make no sense, either rationally or morally". Have you ever looked into the Catholic views on the atonement, specifically the "Satisfaction theory"?
Just curious; You say "The standard, orthodox explanations of it make no sense, either rationally or morally". Have you ever looked into the Catholic views on the atonement, specifically the "Satisfaction theory"?
I've never heard of the Satisfaction Theory, Mike. Could you explain it, please?
I make no claim to a perfect understanding, but I have evinced a rational explanation of what Jesus represents and what He achieved that is internally consistent and compatible with the Christian narrative. Of course, it needs to be reinterpreted using the revealed character of God (Holy Spirit) as demonstrated by Jesus Christ as depicted on the Cross. It represents decades of effort and is my best understanding of what is and has been inscrutable for millennia.
My view removes the primitive and barbaric interpretation made by our ignorant ancient ancestors who mistakenly believed in a wrathful and vengeful God who needed to be appeased by blood sacrifices to forgive us for "whatever." Their sacrifice interpretation is rooted deep in our primitive past as far back as Noah. But its retention is the result of the schoolmaster stage our species had to evolve through to tame their savagery and get to where we are today. During that stage, God was depicted as a wrathful and vengeful War God who would eternally punish us for disobedience so our savage ancestors knew no other God.
The atonement Jesus achieved has nothing to do with atoning for anything. There were no sins that need to be paid for by bribing God with a bloody sacrifice so He can forgive us. Our task as children of God is to reproduce His Holy Spirit of agape love. The purpose of doing that is to grow and mature our human spirit (consciousness) into At-One-Ment with God's agape love upon our death and rebirth as Spirit. Jesus did precisely that for us because we were unable to achieve the necessary perfection. He perfected agape love in His human consciousness (spirit) and connected our collective human consciousness to God.
His death on the Cross exemplified His perfection. When He died His human consciousness was "born again" as Spirit (as ours will be) permanently connecting all human consciousness to God. That is how He abides with us in the collective human consciousness as the Comforter (Holy Spirit) to guide us all to the Truth God has "written in our hearts." That is how Jesus saved us and how He is the Way to God, Truth, and Life.
In sum, we were failing miserably at reproducing God's agape love and forgiveness. We were focused on obedience to laws and weren't even trying. Eventually, we had evolved enough intergenrational self-control during the schoolmaster stage that we were ready to learn the actual purpose of that control - agape love of God and each other. As jesus later reported, the "fields were ripe for the harvest" to promote the use of self-control motivated not by fear of God but by His agape love and forgiveness.
We as Christians herald the birth of Jesus when God sent His Holy Spirit to be born as a human so that He could develop His Human consciousness under the guidance of God's Holy Spirit to achieve the necessary connection (Identity) with God's Holy Spirit of agape love within His human consciousness which none of us could ever perfectly achieve. Our failures to perfectly obey the laws made obvious our inability to achieve such perfection.
To fully appreciate this version of the Gospel without all the wrathful nonsense, we need to understand what our species has had to contend with to reach this level of understanding of God. This requires a different understanding of the Bible fables and stories in the context of our actual circumstances here on earth. It is the Bible that misrepresents God and His motives as the result of wrath and anger at our disobedience and sinfulness, which considering our ignorance is preposterous. It also explains the necessity for such an unambiguous demonstration of God's agape love and forgiveness of our ignorance (not knowing what we did) by Jesus on the Cross.
Clearly, the environment within which our spiritual maturation must occur is contrary to the caring agape love goal. It is totally barbaric and uncaring - literally "red in tooth and claw." That presents myriad opportunities for a bunch of sins (missing the goal of agape love) that would need to be corrected and many that should be kept from ever happening at all. The source of this sin (missing the mark of agape love) and our failure to love is our ignorance, immaturity, and our spirit's partner in crime which is our indiscriminate reptilian brain.
It is our reptilian animal brain that is the source of all our drives and it is programmed from birth to protect our survival, seek what is pleasurable and avoid what is painful or threatening to our survival. When I say it is indiscriminate in its functioning, I mean completely without any other consideration beyond its programmed goals - survival-protecting, pleasure-seeking, and pain avoidance.
As stated, our Spirit's goal is to reproduce God's agape love and attain a spiritual character that is compatible with God's Holy Spirit and achieve it in an environment that is, to say the least, not remotely compatible with that goal. On further reflection, though, it is perfect for incurring those situations and circumstances that would evoke the very states of mind associated with agape love in those spirits who are maturing properly. Unfortunately, it happens seemingly at the expense of the victims of those evoking circumstances.
Our species' situation from its creation and inception has had two separate tracks to trod. Our species had to evolve over time intergenerational self-control over our reptilian partner and acquire the knowledge of our goal of agape love so we could discriminate among our drives to avoid those victimizing situations above. This is what necessitated the schoolmaster stage under Moses.
The second track is intra-generational in that each individual within each generation has to mature from scratch and learn all the above from its parents and others. To say we have done a lousy job on both tracks would be an extreme understatement! The primary reason for this utterly miserable performance has been our lack of any reliable source of information about why we exist and what our goal actually is, the assertions of Bible infallibility notwithstanding.
The fables and stories chronicled in the Bible reflect our species' long road to learning the lessons necessary to achieve our reason for existence. Eden was our first lesson in discriminating among the drives and desires our animal bodies generate - literally the knowledge of Good and Evil. Our misunderstanding and misinterpretation of God during this evolution have contributed to our current difficulties in understanding. It has been an uphill evolutionary battle exacerbated by our perverse human flaws, failings, vanity, hubris, and ignorance in our myriad efforts to understand God.
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Turning me into a "fundie" might be easier. 
I don't understand the Atonement
