The main reason why I cannot accept Christ as my saviour

Faith & Science Conversation
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There is no magic involved in the very real metaphor that actions speak louder than words. This is a truth without the slightest bit of magic involved. But to be sure people can refuse to see the fact that when they behave in a certain way then they condone others who behave in that way no matter what words they say, because what counts isn’t the lies they speak but what they actually do. This is exactly why James says faith without works is dead, because empty words have no faith in them – and their actions make a lie out of the words they speak.

Not literally, no – no more than freedom literally requires people to die. Nevertheless God requires us to change and people do not change without suffering and death, just as freedom requires a defense against those who would take our freedoms away and thus people have to put their lives on the line to defend it. The point being is there is no magical power to human sacrifice and God certainly does not need to be appeased by killing animals or people.

It is not about some difficulty or requirements that God has in order to forgive. (And if people behaved that way, demanding that human sacrifices in order for them to forgive, then they would have our complete contempt for good reason.) It is about what is needed for us to change. Because simply forgiving our sins does not accomplish anything – in fact, it is easy to observe that cheap forgiveness only encourages people to do even worse.

In Jesus’ own words, God sent him that we might have life and have it more abundantly. The greater life Jesus brought was the eternal life of the spirit in a restored relationship with God. Again it is not about forgiveness of sins but removing sins. Just forgiving sins so we can sin some more accomplishes nothing but a deranged sense of entitlement with indulgences. Jesus brought a renewal of the memetic inheritance originally given to Adam which had been polluted with self-destructive habits. Furthermore by understanding the consequences of our sins and God’s willingness to do anything to overcome them, there was no rational way to blame God for our problems and the relationship to us as parent and teacher could be restored. The point here is the problem was always ours and never God’s and Jesus came to set the record straight.

Yes those who believe some god sent his son to earth in order to be sacrificed so this god could forgive them, do indeed believe in god who is insane.

Incorrect! Rational fathers do this all the time in supporting them to work as policemen to risk their lives in order to uphold the law, as soldiers to risk their lives in order to defend freedom, etc… These are all the same metaphor that actions speak louder than words and the metaphor that if they die then they haven’t died for nothing. Likewise, God sent his Son that we might have life and have it more abundantly and this requires us to change. It is only our perversity that we usually do not change without seeing the death of the innocent.

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I will leave it here. I still find your view incoherent and illogical. In the above, a father who encourages his son to be a policeman or a soldier isn’t doing it for a metaphor. He is doing it to help others avoid REAL HARM, like theft, murder, battery, invasion, bombardment of our cities etc. There is nothing metaphorical about it. Those potential harms are quite real. Thus I find your metaphorical explanation to be illogical as well.

You can have the last word

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Hello Reggie,

The fact that no man is able to die for another that the other may escape the penalty of death for sin is the reason Jesus, the sinless Son of God came to us. As Son of God, (God Himself having put on a coat of flesh to live among us), He that’s innocent of sin is able to die in our place for our “bad-boy” deeds (sins) to deliver us from the undesirable penalty of death that God hates. Consider the scriptures where Jesus says, “I lay down my life (John 10:15, 17).” When we honestly confess our “bad-boy” nature, not only does He forgives and forgets our sins, He in exchange gives us as a gift His righteous nature.

We live this righteousness as gratitude for the “Banker’s” forgiving us for our impossible debt.

In verse 32 where God says, “For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone,” God is speaking of His having no desire to execute the sinner for the death the sinner deserves. Does Jesus’ death contradict this scripture? The answer is “No” because it eliminates the need for execution of you and me because the price we owe has been paid by His death. It only behooves us to take up on the offer of redemption. Otherwise, A banker cannot forgive a man from an impossible debt if the man refuses to take up on the offer for the banker’s forgiveness.

The Old Testament offering of a harmless, unblemished lamb symbolized the then future death of the innocent Lamb of God, Jesus on the cross. “Without the shedding of blood there’s no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22).” The “shedding of blood” represents death in our place.

Is Jesus’ offer of salvation acceptable now?

Earl

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I find that there is much confusion about the reason that Jesus came to Earth as a human. Although He does speak about His mission, it is still not clear. Many are focused on the “blood offering of God” to erase all of mankind’s sins forever. But this is quite illogical since sin has existed in all of mankind including Christians.

All of God’s prophets were brutally killed, so God would also expect this with Jesus. So, His physical death is nothing special. What He came here to do was to conquer Death (Satan) by showing everyone that a perfect life can be lived, resisting Satan and sin. Regardless what Satan promised Jesus, He remained true to His Father, thus defeating Death. Since He was fully human, Satan couldn’t cry foul, Jesus had won fair and square. He resisted all temptation and died without sin.

So, when Jesus passed final judgement over Satan and this world, Satan had no way to complain. Had God intervened on humanity’s behalf, Satan would not have accepted it, nor his followers. But having been fairly defeated in front of all of his followers, he could not talk his way out, nor gain support for being treated unfairly.

The risk that Jesus took taking on the role of the Messiah was that He could have succumb to Satan, and failed His test. Had this happened, God would have had to send another, Like Micheal or Gabriel. Fortunately plan B was not needed.

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If we buy into those saying Jesus was a human sacrifice to enable God’s forgiveness, then wouldn’t we say that we did have a part in all this by crucifying Jesus with a little help from St. Judas.

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Wow, this place has some very different theological views. Nowhere does Michael or Gabriel equate themselves with God, as Jesus said. Jesus said, *he that hath seen me hath seen the Father;" equating himself with God the Father implying he was worthy of worship.

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Neither does Jesus equate himself to God and Jesus never asked us to worship Him.

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Welcome to the public square! While some might occasionally be ushered out, none are vetted before coming in.

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The verses are commands to humans only. How does this apply to Christ the Lord? The reason why it only applies to humans is because humans sin, and sinners can’t take on the burden of other sinners.

God, on the other hand, can take on the sins of another human.

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He cannot, however, offer a human as a sacrifice, least of all a blemished one outside of the temple.

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Worded slightly differently, this fits my worldview that a belief that the creation of animal life thru ‘Darwinian’ evolution (and discarding the Innocence of Eden and the Fall into Sin) leads to a more sensible explanation of Jesus’ death and his role as our Savior. While I accept the fact that Darwinian evolution displays isolated instances of “benign action” (e.g.symbiosis), it more often rewards selfishness; i.e. it is essentially amoral. Even so, it has produced life of amazing variety and beauty, and we can agree with the author(s) of Genesis that God saw it as Good. Good, but perhaps not complete. If one of His creatures were endowed with Mind and Conscience and freedom to choose to rise above animal instincts, that creature could be His co-creator, could strive to live in His Image, and live a more abundant life.

We Christians believe that many ancient peoples (e.g. O.T. prophets) made valiant efforts to lead this sort of life, but they always fell far short. Jesus was the only creature that completely ‘filled the bill’. He was simultaneously truly human biologically, but truly in God’s Image spiritually. It was his role to lead the whole human race in the struggle to overcome their ‘Selfish Genes’ and become moral beings in the way their God is moral. In other words, to become the Christ, the eternal Messiah.

This would be very difficult to accomplish, leading those of his generation with whom he could be in contact. How could he reach out to humans in the future and on the other side of the globe? Certainly this was not in his biologically human form.

We have much to learn from Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Acting on his truly human nature, he asked God the Father if he could complete his mission without undergoing a painful passion and death. After all, He knew how deeply he had affected the lives of his close disciples. And just a few days before, crowds in Jerusalem had greeted him with Hosannahs and Hail to our King. But perhaps he had premonition that those same crowds would soon be shouting "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

At that moment Jesus realized that NO single human being, no matter how beloved and innocent, could reach out to future generations and lead them to the kind of life God had in mind for them. Only by accepting a horrible passion and death could he create strong enough memories in his disciples that would be passed on into the distant future–into what Teihard called the Noosphere.

Seeing Jesus in the role of an Innocent Lamb sacrificed for our sins has certainly been helpful in keeping many Christians on the ‘straight and narrow’ path, and it should NOT be abandoned. But His role in leading us to become Co-creators with God the Father can contain an equal measure of Truth. After all, we scientists believe that light is both particles and waves, but only a few of us comfortable enough with mathematics try to explain its duality to others.

The same applies to “explaining” Jesus’ role as our Savior.
Al Leo

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My approach comes largely from just reading the Bible with the knowledge of modern science as part of my perceptual filter… part of the way that I see and understand the world. The result is compatibility with science without replacing the Bible with it. For example, it is natural for me see Adam and Eve chosen out of an already existing population of homo sapiens. But I see no reason to replace the communication from God told about in the Bible with an evolutionary methodology. After all evolution just doesn’t operate on the right time scale to be relevant for human development. So Adam and Eve “enter the noosphere” with a memetic inheritance directly from God. Overcoming our roots in the biosphere is not a milestone of evolution but a necessary challenge for the development of life “in the noosphere,” because challenges are how life develops regardless of whether it is genetic life or memetic life. It is always the challenge of life to establish its transcendence (adopting this word for the simultaneous independence and sensitivity/awareness) of the environment.

This is a misconception. What is really going on is different stages of evolution which goes from evolution of the individual to evolution of communities. We see this in the development of multi-cellular organisms and before that in the development of eukaryotic cells.

It is true, however, that memetic evolution is inherently communal because its inheritance and the encoding of information is in the medium of human communication, especially language. It is the fact that language has proven to have all the encoding capabilities of DNA/RNA and more, that demonstrates that the memetic code has just as much capability for supporting life of its own as the genetic code.

In any case, it should be apparent that I have a more traditional Christian theology of fall and restoration rather than this evolutionary approach you seem to be using. The only place I see it entering the story is in dealing with the fiasco we had before the flood where a monolithic human society becomes dominated by self-destructive habits. Thus God saw the need for a competitive evolutionary approach in a multi-cultural world (multiple nations and multiple languages). Thus war became one of the dire prices of human progress.

I also stick with the traditional Trinitarian theology where Jesus is God rather than some kind of evolutionary milestone. The fact is that the overuse of the evolutionary model I see in your description looks to me like too much of a shift from Grace to works. To be sure there is a balance to be found here between our work in learning and the Grace in receiving God’s message, since I think you would be right in saying that the latter cannot accomplish anything without the former. However much a classroom might need a teacher, the teacher can do nothing unless the students make some effort to digest what is taught.

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My worldview, like yours, does not replace the Bible with science. However, we do differ in how science should act as a perceptual filter on the information we get from reading the current English translations of the Bible. For example, science can help us decide which passages are to be taken as factual and which are clearly metaphorical. What about Adam & Eve themselves? Were they real, individual, biological humans and so “it is natural for me to see (them) chosen out of an already existing population of Homo sapiens.” That appears to me to be a sensible use of science (genetics) as a filter. But then it forces one to believe that the traditional version in Genesis (where Adam is formed from dust and later Eve from his rib) must be purely metaphorical.

I am comfortable with the concept (and apparently you are too) that the appearance of humankind can be dated to the time one (or more) Homo sapiens succeeded in communicating with its Creator mentally/spiritually through what Teilhard called the Noosphere. Much of this communication revolved around what purpose God had in mind for humankind, since He had set them apart from all other animals and given them freedom of choice.

Most of us judge how human is the life we are living by the benefits that human civilization confers; i.e. our memetic life and how it is evolving. During the hundreds of millennia that Homo sapiens coexisted with Neanderthals, there was. apparently, little difference to choose in terms of their lifestyles, of health, of enjoyment, or the satisfaction of ‘making progress’. About 50,000 yrs. ago that suddenly changed, and our ancestors soon dominated the planet. This has been called The Great Leap Forward (GLF) and is most clearly evidenced in Europe by the sudden appearance of sophisticated cave art and burial of the dead with valuable artifacts for a perceived afterlife. Obviously, this unique behavioral change could not have occurred through ‘ordinary’ Darwinian evolution; i.e. mutation of DNA. Insufficient time. But there IS some data that hints at epigenetic changes concurrent with the teaching/learning process that CAN affect genetic expression and that CAN be passed on to future generations through language.

So, maybe it is too early to completely bury Lamarkian evolution. It makes it easier to rationalize how Adam & Eve and family interacted with the People of Nod, and how so many humans managed to misbehave to the extent that God regretted creating them. [Ed. Note: “Regret” is one emotion I could never attribute to the God I worship. But I can’t say why. Certainly NOT because of Scriptural support.]

No one I know would proudly admit that their worldview was largely based on blind faith. Most of us who have been raised in a religious environment that has been guided by Scripture look for some sort of “spectacles” that minimize any perceived contradiction between that Scripture other inputs to their worldview. We all would like to use ‘the best from the past’ to guide us in living the happiest, the most productive lives in the future.

The girl that I married was brought up in the LDS (Mormon) church, and from her extended family I learned a great deal about how religious Faith can influence one’s worldview. I quickly learned that I could never accommodate the Book of Mormon or the Doctrines & Covenants into the worldview that I was forming. Yet I greatly admired the kind of life that it inspired them to lead. IMHO the heaven which they aspired to was not all that attractive, but the society that they currently lived in, while overly restrictive in many ways, had certain advantages over the overly materialistic one that dominates the U.S. today.

So I am led to believe that God, in endowing one of His creatures with a conscience, gives us considerable (but not unlimited) leeway in guiding our own destiny. I believe He encourages us to use the scientific method to increase our knowledge of the Universe He created for us, but it is the impact that Jesus’ life continues to have on each of ours that really matters. Whether Jesus will come (amidst the clouds) to earth a second time to establish His Kingdom all at once, as Scripture describes it; or, rather, that He has never really left, but the Kingdom He promised is in the Noosphere and only to be attained gradually.
God Bless
Al Leo

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I don’t know what “purely metaphorical” means. What I get with my perceptual filter reading those words is that “formed from the dust” means produced by the matter and forces of the physical universe, thinking that “dust” is as close as you would expect them to get to “particles.” Then “breathed into them the breath of life” means God spoke to them for after all the word “inspiration” comes from divine breath. But in general I take the story to be basically historical but inundated with symbolism for frankly nothing shouts symbolism louder in the Bible than the names of those two trees, so taking them to refer to some species of flora is absurd.

Though I am not willing to see this as meaning anything more than human/linguistic communication. In particular I do not believe in confusing mentality with spirituality for these are two entirely different things, and the confusion of the two is a pagan system of thought from Plato and the Gnostics to which I am very much opposed.

I don’t believe that free will is what sets man apart from the animals. I believe that free will is the essence of all life, though there are certainly some significant quantitative differences. What sets man apart is language and the memetic life based upon it. It is still the same process of life, just in a different medium though on an accelerated time scale that may make the free will of other forms of life seem somewhat insignificant by comparison.

In my case, this is a matter of scientific principle. Something is alive when it does things for its own reasons independent of the environment (though responsive to it). It is not the fact that civilization provides better for our physical needs but the fact that it creates an environment all its own much like the body is an environment for the cells which are a part of it. And thus we act in an environment full of linguistic principles like justice, love, and the relationships we have with others – so much so that this becomes far more important than the “natural” environment to the point of being all consuming. This is evidenced in the way that people will die for such intangibles.

Well the principle of “no inheritance of acquired characteristics” doesn’t apply to our memetic inheritance.

Whereas I believe in a God fully capable of taking risks and surrendering control as a necessary part of love and thus making Himself susceptible to regret when those He loves choose an existence filled with endless torment and horror.

For me it is the character of the Jesus portrayed in those books which looks to me to be all about authority rather than love compared to the Jesus I see in the NT.

Where would that be? Here in Utah that isn’t a universal reality, and so the experience of some of the LDS here isn’t quite so admirable (as reported to me by others not in my own experience never having been a part of that community though my best friends growing up were LDS).

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I think people have forgotten one thing about Jesus dying for our sins, or at least those who don’t like the idea of an innocent man paying for someone else’s sins, have forgotten. I have often said to atheists, who point out the problem of evil to me, that if God exists, and he is a Klingon war god, we best do what that requires. This is all to mean, God can do what He wants to do whether or not we like the idea. If God chose to use substitutionary death as a means to pay for our sins, then saying it is ridiculous or an insane idea is pointless. God can do whatever He wishes to do. To me, starting with Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, on through the sacrifice of innocent lambs for the sins of the early Jewish people, to Jesus, this thread that the innocent pay for our sins runs strong and that is what I see in Scripture. Those who don’t like the idea should take the issue up with God–as I see it, it was His plan and he sets the rules.

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This is a common misconception and the source of if came from the barbaric emperor Justinian, who by the way committed genocide after declaring it. Why would the emperor declare God all powerful when the early Christians believed that God would not violate His own Laws.

Are you sure it was not the God of the dead (Mark 12:27) that coerced Abraham into trying to kill his son and that it was the Father who sent His angel to stop him?

Be careful about what men do in the name of god and what actually is the Will of God.

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Actually God has already taken it up with us (via the old testament prophets, no less). Turns out He doesn’t like it. One bit. So as you say … we probably best mind God’s word on this, no matter how much one may wish to see a Klingon warrior God. If that God shows us a gentle servant-hood lamb instead, then I guess it may be the wrath enthusiasts with some soul-searching yet to do.

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Of me saying God can do what he wants, Shawn replied:

I am delighted to finally meet God’s boss who knows God’s limitations. And glad to find you are a pretty nice guy. Can you relay to God I would like a Mercedes Benz, please? lol and maybe a couple of million $$$ would be nice as well.

It seems to me, that if God is the actual creator, You might say that is a misconception as well, then as creator, He gets to set up the rules of the universe, unless of course, you are his boss, then of course, you do and you are the one who gets to do as he wants. When Jesus said: “* for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham”* That sounds like he can do what he wants.

Hebrews 9:26 says "For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself "

This makes clear that sin was done away with by Jesus’ sacrifice–whether we like it or not, or say it is insane or not–God set up the rules. And notice he set them up at the foundation of the world–that is, programmed those rules into our universe.

1 Peter 1:18-20 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: 20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you

Clearly this idea that Jesus was the equivalent of the once and for all Jewish sacrificial lamb was not a later idea but an idea of St Peter himself. Unless one wishes to say Peter is insane then Peter is saying that Jesus was the lamb that takes away the sins of the world–like it or not we must play by God’s rules not ours.

John the Baptist said of Jesus: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

Clearly an analogy with the paschal lamb. The problem is that when one decides one can pick and chose what he believes in the Bible, then people can draw any conclusion they want, including that Jesus taking away our sins by the sacrifice of his son, is an insane idea.

Another disciple, John continues this view: Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Rev 13:8

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world

Again God set up the rules of this game of life.

The question of whether or not God would violate his own rules is evident in the resurrection–the rule is once you are dead for 3 days, you don’t get up. I think the longest one has been ‘dead’ (without breathing) and revived is about 15 m , and he was in ice cold water. Three days dead— no one gets up. The resurrection of Jesus and of Lazarus require a massive violation of the laws of physics and biology. Now, if one doesn’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, then there isn’t any reason to care about any of this Christian stuff anyway.

Shawn wrote: “Be careful about what men do in the name of god and what actually is the Will of God.”

As God’s boss I am sure that is great advice and you can inform us of what the Will of God actually is.

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At least you did not call me a heretic like emperor Justinian did…

  1. If anyone says or thinks that the power of God is limited, and that he created as much as he was able to compass, let him be anathema.

I do not pretend to know the Will of God and would challenge anybody who does. My point is to doubt anyone that says they are doing X in the name of god, especially when it violates His commandments.

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Well, Jesus, human incarnated of God, who took the sacrifice, was without sin. Blemished?