By Apostate Paul ~
I used to think that the Christian gospel message was totally messed up.
I mean, basically the gospel message starts out by saying that there is an all-powerful God that set up a divine legal system that punishes all of us created people eternally for being what we are created to be. After dropping that unsavory bomb on you, the "good" part comes in: lucky for us, there is an easy loophole out of this system. All you have to do is advocate the punishment of someone who's not even guilty, Jesus. If you just say "I accept Jesus' punishment in place of my own" you're good.
Because, you know, letting someone innocent suffer in your place is the height of righteousness and virtue.
At least the bad guy got what he deserves.But this morning, I realized that I had missed something. Jesus is God, right? And God created evil. So Jesus isn't really innocent, is he? And punishing Jesus for the sin of the world... well, that's actually the only thing that really makes sense. Because he's the One that brought it all about anyway. God made evil beings, and then punished himself for creating all that evil. Pretty masochistic, to be sure, but not totally backwards from an ethical standpoint.
Of course, I still have no reason to accept the Bible or the Church as reliable sources of truth, so I'm not gonna start believing its convoluted doctrines any time soon, but I found this hidden gem of justice in the Bible to be quite satisfying. At least the bad guy got what he deserves.
Website: http://www.regenesis-blog.com
I mean, basically the gospel message starts out by saying that there is an all-powerful God that set up a divine legal system that punishes all of us created people eternally for being what we are created to be. After dropping that unsavory bomb on you, the "good" part comes in: lucky for us, there is an easy loophole out of this system. All you have to do is advocate the punishment of someone who's not even guilty, Jesus. If you just say "I accept Jesus' punishment in place of my own" you're good.
Because, you know, letting someone innocent suffer in your place is the height of righteousness and virtue.
At least the bad guy got what he deserves.But this morning, I realized that I had missed something. Jesus is God, right? And God created evil. So Jesus isn't really innocent, is he? And punishing Jesus for the sin of the world... well, that's actually the only thing that really makes sense. Because he's the One that brought it all about anyway. God made evil beings, and then punished himself for creating all that evil. Pretty masochistic, to be sure, but not totally backwards from an ethical standpoint.
Of course, I still have no reason to accept the Bible or the Church as reliable sources of truth, so I'm not gonna start believing its convoluted doctrines any time soon, but I found this hidden gem of justice in the Bible to be quite satisfying. At least the bad guy got what he deserves.
Website: http://www.regenesis-blog.com
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