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And if you don’t sin, then Jesus died for nothing.
MBA in theology
I never understood the most basic, fundamental point of Christianity - how does Jesus getting crucified forgive my sins? Is it some sort of ancient Christian bar bet?
“Oh, you think it’s so easy? You get crucified, and if you really do it, I’ll forgive everybody’s sins.”
“That’s bullshit. You won’t do that.”
"I’ll go you one better - I’ll forgive their sins forever.
All right, you got a bet!"
If I committed a murder, that murder doesn’t just go away just because some random, third party person died somewhere, 2000 years ago. My victim is still dead, the family is still sad, and I’m still a murderer.
The next time I’m in front of a judge, can I claim my crimes are already absolved because a guy died long ago? Of course not, I’m going to jail. The government doesn’t buy that story because it makes no sense, and I’m not buying it either.
Edit: Numerous insightful replies, I’m impressed. Thanks, gang!
This has been a source of debate since the very earliest days of Christianity, but essentially the main idea isn’t that suffering in and of itself is what did it, it is that Jesus was a literal ritual sacrifice for the sins of humanity. In ancient Judaism, there was a lot of focus on animal sacrifices, and the Book of Leviticus lays out a very complex and rigid set of sacrifices that must be performed as atonements for each type of ritual impurity or sin, with the degree of sacrifice required roughly corresponding to the seriousness of the offense. It ranged from spiced cakes donated to the Temple for minor offenses to burning an entire bull without eating any of the meat for especially serious ones. Christians believe that by living a perfect human life and by being God incarnate, Jesus proved to be a good enough sacrifice to permanently atone for all the sins of humanity.
Of course, this begs the question of why God can’t decide he just doesn’t want to do all these sacrifices to begin with, and that goes back to Greek philosophers like Plato who tried to work out what properties a monotheistic God would have. One of the properties that got worked out was that if God is the greatest possible being, then He cannot change- after all, if He could, then he would have either not been the greatest possible being before, or he would be becoming something other than the greatest possible being. Therefore, if you believe that God created a set laws that demand sacrifice, then they must be in effect forever.
I would then wonder the validity of the assumption that the ancient Jewish laws were actually God’s divine laws in the first place under this set of assumptions, but that is assumed to be true by both Christians and Jews as a matter of faith.
how does Jesus getting crucified forgive my sins? Is it some sort of ancient Christian bar bet?
Speaking as someone literally brought up in a cult like environment, it’s just one of the many nonsense word-salad doctrines that people live by when those people were never able to separate their feelings from their world. IE: there is a segment of the population who do not have a distinction between an outside world, separate from their feelings about it.
This is a reflection of how the brain works at a most basic level. It’s not a logic tool for reasoning out problems, not by default at least. It’s default instruction state is to assemble experiences and associations to write a story to explain how you feel, and it doesn’t actually have objective understanding about the world, so those stories do not need to make sense.
When you really, truly internalize and digest this fact, you will understand so much about yourself and others. You can overcome some depressive episodes and know how to make people like you, how to manage addiction and unhealthy behavior and how to avoid being manipulated by others, and so much more. It’s vastly important we understand this about our brains.
You have to actually train your brain to actually analyze and understand the world around you in a way that shows you how you and the world relate to each other. Most people don’t do this work, but brains are good enough at taking advantage of your environment that they can still get through life… but it leaves a lot of room for huge errors in reasoning. In fact, it’s not conscious reasoning at all, it’s story-building followed by total acceptance of this story without question because you think it’s you reasoning, but it’s just how your brain weaves narratives in your mind.
So for the people who never learned this distinction, they just feel a thing, and then either let their brains assemble a story to explain it, or they latch onto someone else’s supplied story. This is how people are manipulated on mass scales.
“Jesus died for your sins” makes no logical sense, but it’s not meant to, it’s meant to make you feel like something is being done about the thing you worry most about, if you’re going to see your loved ones again in heaven. That’s a paralyzing fear for almost every human who’s ever lived. Our awareness of death has opened a huge vulnerability in our reasoning skills and caused us more death and harm than if we didn’t worry about it so much.
Once you have a McGuffin that makes you feel protected from this thing you fear most, you are more likely to reinforce and build further narratives around this idea to protect it. To not protect it, to dismantle it and try to figure it out is literally painful to many people, because it invites in the question… What if you’re wrong?" and even approaching that question makes people who have never processed these emotions absolutely fall apart.
edit: I want to add one thing, that the more you think about the really hard thing, your inevitable end, it becomes easier to accept and make peace with. Especially as you get older and more aware of your own limitations and realize you’re kinda stuck on rails in this life. There is no bigger story or experience you will miss out on.
Truly excellent post, and a special thumbs up to the use of McGuffin in this context.
You are describing Critical Thinking Skills, something that gives people the ability to recognize and dismiss propaganda, among other things. Critical Thinking is how we are meant to process information, and without it, people substitute the kind of chaotic thinking you describe.
Conservatives recognize Critical Thinking Skills as dangerous to their important propaganda machine, so controlling education, and suppressing the overt teaching of Critical Thinking Skills is an important on going mission.
I was lucky to have three years in high school with a subversive English teacher that used his subject to teach us Critical Thinking Skills, and hone them. I didn’t recognize what he had been up to until years later, and I was so pleased that he was so much more subversive than I ever knew.
This is absolutely about critical thinking and I wish we could all be so lucky to have a teacher like you did.
But I realized in typing this out that I have stopped saying the term “critical thinking” years and years ago, because like other terms it has basically lost all meaning, like “gaslighting.” People just say it without any idea what it means, so I stopped saying it. Instead I try to explain it to people without naming it, because people on both sides of every issue think they know what it means.
We need some kind of new order with a nationalized Mr Rogers type system for teaching people the most basic shit all over again. Literally, I am astonished how people missed even the most basic lessons from Saturday morning cartoons, I feel like a huge segment of the population were watching G.I. Joe as kids and routing for Cobra or booing the public service messages at the end.
I tried to get in touch with Mr Clark at one point, but he had passed away about 5 years earlier, so I honor him by talking about him now and then. Easily the most influential teacher of my life, the kind of teacher ALL teachers should aspire to be.
In what way did he teach you critical thinking skills?
In 10th grade English, we had to write a few papers where we had to defend a position, using strictly documented sources. That taught us how to organize our thoughts, and rely on sources, not our own opinions.
In 11th grade, we had Shakespeare 1, in which we read several plays, and discussed them in class from the directors perspective so we had to decide how to best tell the story, and defend our choices. The desks were arranged in a giant circle, so that when you were debating a point, you had to face the person you were debating with. The ultimate lesson was that the objective was to decide on the best idea, not just win the debate with your inferior concept, and that sometimes means leaving your own idea behind, in favor of the better one. We learned that there is no shame in acknowledging an objectively better idea.
12th grade was Shakespeare 2, and more polishing of our skills.
I thought we were just learning Shakespeare, whom he taught me to love to this day, decades later. It wasn’t until years after high school, when I was listening to Rush Limbaugh when he first came on the scene, and wondered why his obvious propaganda wasn’t seducing me like it was seducing other listeners. That was when I realized that my Critical Thinking Skills were better than most peoples,’ and that all tracked back to Mr. Clark’s English classes. He’s the one that taught me how to think properly, as I thought I was just enjoying Shakespeare.
Mr. Clark was a flat out fucking genius.
Yeah it would have been way easier for the apparently all good, all knowing, all powerful god to just, you know, forgive us, but that wouldn’t have made for a good book
I want to use an analogy. If you have a landlord who seeks rent every month and you don’t give it one month, then you get kicked out and if you can’t transport your stuff on time then it gets trashed.
If that landlord made an exception, then the full force of the law would require the exception to be applied equally. Soon enough the landlord would have his stuff turn to shit.
However if a buddy spotted your rent, then asked you to simply remember him and try to do better, then the landlord could retain the perfect administration and the perfect justice, and your buddy could be able to chill with you in cool places.
Most of the time I hear about God the father being perfect justice like the landlord and Jesus being able to extend mercy from the suffering so he can provide mercy if you promise to do better.
Simply saying “why not have no rules if you make the rules” is a good response, but there are probably some side effects if there are not rules maintained.
Yeah that’s a neat analogy, but it breaks down when you realize that the landlord is supposedly all good, all knowing, and all powerful. If a being with those properties makes a system that can go to shit, or needs to be “fixed”, then he either made it that way on purpose and is a monster, or he isn’t all knowing and all powerful. Either way, not worth worshipping in my opinion.
I generally try to leave room for everyone at the table, and I think that God can still be worth worshipping. Here is my thought process:
In mathematics there are set theory theorems that prove that some infinities are bigger than others. Therefore a all powerful god (considered infinity over all this observable spacetime) is still progressing (increasing if choosing good) and regressing ( slowing the rate of increase or decreaseing) if choosing evil.
We humans were given the knowledge of good and evil at some point while growing up. We are to be joint heirs with christ (and what power and authority does christ inherit from various ways?). Therefore we humans know and can choose evil or good with infinite side effects some day.
I think/speculate that an infinite god would place hard limits on evil, but I don’t know how that would look like. Therefore if there are hard limits then the definition of this system is one that cannot go to shit.
If the process of creating “good” human-children/heirs with infinite side effects requires real choice (not strawman choice) between good and evil, then how could God create this spacetime to allow this?
I think a tendency toward judging choices and choosing good over evil are the preffered properties that are being selected for. I also think these are Emergent properties of neural nets (i think human intelligence are at least partially from neural nets from physical neurons).
I have greater capacity for evil because I know better. I can see where you come from and I respect it. Please poke holes in my theories where there are issues.
If there are side effects, then the god is not all powerful like the bible claims.
The thing is, the bible was written by corrupt and greedy humans, the bible has been selected (many books left out or included) by corrupt and greedy humans, modified by corrupt and greedy humans, and translated by corrupt and greedy humans.
If I wrote a book and claimed “it is the direct word of god and this god is the only god that is all powerful and all knowing and better than your god” that doesn’t make it true. That is literally what happened thousands of years ago, and nobody could refute it or argue against it because the only people who were literate or educated at all were the elite who had a vested interest in control and order
If there is a god and any of his word actually made it into the cherry picked bible, it is so mangled and corrupted beyond recognition as to be useless and unrecognizable, and people STILL have corrupted it so much further daily that they do not follow a single point of the bible. What makes anyone think that people back then were magically less hateful and had absolute 100% integrity even though there was significantly more war and corruption than now.
I agree with you on all counts.
To add a little more to your arguments: In the times of Isaiah, the current corrupt greedy humans wanted to only refer to dead prophets that they could misinterpret to their hearts’ content.
There is a guy who was the founder of Less Wrong that summarized religion vs science like this: if God spoke once and every generation after is less enlightened, then following religion sucks. If science allows you to stand on the shoulders of those who came before where you are continuously becoming less wrong then you can actually do good and become better. Note that I am paraphrasing hard.
Religion that I accept is when there is both individual communication from God and collective leadership from someone who has communication from God. This handles edge cases like when you can’t feel God because of “loud hormones/feelings/pain” when you can go to leadership. It also handles you growing at your own pace and creating a personal collection of writings that are like a “you specific scripture”.
Religion lacking these traits leads to you being further from God than your parents.
Seeking religion has risks: there is a real risk of “blind leading the blind”. Good luck if you choose to pursue religion because the standard used for a godly leader was last defined as a prophet/apostle by Jesus with specific rituals to give authority. The catholic church which curated the bible says they never lost authority. All other Christian religions have to make peace with how authority to get answers on behalf of others is obtained.
Have peace on your journey.
“I saved you from being sent to hell.”
“Wait, who was going to send me to hell?”
“I was”
“…”
“Praise and worship pls, I suffered a lot for this.”
The OG conservative undiagnosed-something parent.
Depending on the interpretation the “I was” should be “yourself”.
As God is the source of all life and good, choosing to turn away from Him means hell is self-inflicted.
Ah, so we can kill people for not doing what we want, as long as we warn them first?
Then if they don’t do what we say, their death was self-inflicted.Seems reasonable.
No? That’s not what it means.
Let me try an analogy: suppose you got out in a snowstorm, God is someone who loves you and got after you to light a fire so you can be warm, what happens if you still insist on going away?
If you love someone and they go out in a snowstorm, then decide they were wrong and its too cold. Would you let them back into your house, or would you keep the door locked and let them freeze to death.
This is like the parable of the bridessmaids. God presents itself as vindictive and petty. We are told, endlessly that god has perfect love, but that is not what the bible shows us in the deeds of god or jesus, or the parables constructed to represent them.
But wouldn’t making us in such a way that their absence amounts to eternal torment also be a deliberate choice by an all powerful being?
Isaiah 45:7 : I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things,"
God made the evil.
Even if he wasn’t made up, the god character from the Christian Bible is the most evil, fucked up, bastards in all of fiction. As if murdering the entire planet (minus a hand full of people) wasn’t enough, he then demanded the rape of countless women due to the actions of their fathers and/or husbands. So don’t go around talking about your imaginary friend being this shining moral beacon. Your moral system and foundation of logic is built upon circular reasoning created by a bunch of nomadic biggots jealous of everyone around them.
I pray to Russell’s Teapot you actually read this response, think long and hard about it, and don’t just get caught up with “erm akshully they were Nephilim”
I mean, that doesn’t really fix it if you have an actually omnipotent diety though, because that diety would be responsible for, well, everything, to include what the results of rejecting that diety would be.
Yes, that’s why hell isn’t already the current reality, despite humanity rejecting God, He still lends us life and good things out of love and doesn’t instantly smite those who use His gifts to act outside of His will.
If I told you I built a torture chamber where I’d punish you forever, I’d get the cops called on me. When you tell others the same its actually called love? You sound so insane right now.
I’m not going to defend the person above from having to confront the Problem of Evil (of which confrontation they seem to be in desperate need), but to play YHWH’s advocate for a moment:
They are suggesting that they subscribe to a more traditional view of “hell” than is depicted in, say, Dante’s Inferno. They claim that Hell is merely the absence of god’s love, and that that existence without god is torment enough. They are not suggesting that God has set up a lake of fire for Samael and the other fallen angels to prod at you with pitchforks. Their idea of hell is like an endless void of nothing, alone with your thoughts, cold and alone. Simply “without”.
Now, why an omnipotent being would choose to create a universe where there is such a dichotomy in treatment is another matter. The existence of an Omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient being is mutually exclusive with our experienced reality, unless our definition of “benevolent” does not accurately describe the being’s morals.
I.e., Either God:
(A) does not exist; (B) is not all-powerful; © is not all-seeing/knowing (D) is not all-good.
Well, all but B and D are redundant, an omnipotent being could simply choose to be perfect in every other way. If they are not they specifically avoid being.
Omniscience is not implied by omnipotence. Choosing to be omniscient would first require a perfect knowledge of in what ways they are not omniscient. A sniper in a tower may have the power to destroy any living thing within 300 yards, but if they don’t know what their target is, the power to act doesn’t grant them the knowledge necessary to do so effectively. This, writ-large, is why most people list omniscience in addition to omnipotence among the powers of the abrahamic god (omnibenevolence has been added by much more recent Christians who don’t read the bible). Being all-knowing is required in order to effectively utilise omnipotence, but is not implied by it.
Also, A is listed as the base assumption, and is thus not redundant. It is what you fall back on if B-D are held true, by reductio ad absurdum. Since the other three cannot be true with our definitions of them, and they must be true in order to fit the definition of God according to these people, A would be true by reduction.
As God is the source of all life and good
If this is what god said, then it’s like Jeff Bezos running ads saying he’s a good guy.
Won’t someone unmute jeezus
