Original Sin?

The Crucifixion seems the opposite of the pagan rituals and practices. In Christianity God is the one who does the sacrifice out of love for us. He asks of us not cruelty but the exact opposite to love your neighbor and treat everyone as you would like to be treated. It is meant to inspire the same love witnessed by Christ and His sacrifice. To lovingly sacrifice for others and to take away all fear and shame for it is Jesus who gave everything for us so that we no longer have anything to fear.

Bob seems confused as to where the sacrificial act of love happens . Is it when the father who rushes into a burning building dies or is it when the father rushes in to save his children? What if the father miraculously makes it out okay, does that make his sacrifice null and void or unloving? I don't think so. The act of love is in going into the burning building, which is a great metaphor for what God does for us. He doesn't have to leave Heaven, become one of us, and rush into the world to save it. Yet His love for all of us impels Him. He experiences all we experience fully; pain, suffering, rejection, and death. God experiences these things out of sheer love for us. What is more is that He does this knowing that even still today people will ridicule His sacrifice, demean Him, insult Him, etc. Yet there is God on the cross still loving us with open arms longing for our embrace, but ever patient and ever forgiving.

Quote: FrGamble

The act of love is in going into the burning building, which is a great metaphor for what God does for us..

No it's not. The guy running into
the building has no idea if he'll
live or die. You have said repeatedly
that Jesus claimed to be god, and
a god can never die. So being on
the cross was just a blip for him,
an inconvenience. How dare you
compare that to the real heroics
of a man risking his life to save
his child. It's not even in the
ballpark.

Nothing an eternal God does is a blip. As I've mentioned now many times His suffering in Jesus Christ continues today. I don't think you seem to grasp the immensity of the Incarnation of Christ. God became man and experienced all the human experience in a personal way. Does that not speak to you of sacrifice? Yes God wins in the end, He always will but Jesus' experience of suffering and death and abandonment is as real as if the Father took his son's place in the buring building. Just because He rises from the dead I don't know why you think that nullifies the suffering of Christ.

Again you need to ask yourself would it be less heroic if the father survives running into the burning building? In His humanity Jesus knows He will not survive and yet He goes in anyway. Remember He is fully human as well as fully divine. Jesus is going further than risking His life, He is giving His life to save His son, Bob, and all the people of the world.

Quote: FrGamble

God became man and experienced all the human experience in a personal way. Does that not speak to you of sacrifice? .

Not even in the slightest. It's like a
rich guy taking a stroll at night in
a bad neighborhood surrounded
by his bodyguards, then telling
the story later and leaving out
the bodyguards.
If there was a god (there isn't)
he risks and sacrifices NOTHING
by doing what the Jesus myth
says, because he already knows
the outcome. Just like the rich
guy knew the outcome of his
walk before he took it.

You can't have an all knowing all
seeing god ever sacrificing anything,
it's impossible. That's why gods are
so ridiculous, there are contradictions
at every turn that cannot be resolved.

I think that might be the worst analogy of the Incarnation I have ever heard and you wonder why I tell you that you really know nothing of Christianity.
What if God sacrificed His omnipotence and omniscience in the Incarnate Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. Surely that would be a sacrifice.

Quote: FrGamble

.
What if God sacrificed .

Sigh. You bury your argument with
that sentence. An omniscient all
seeing all knowing god who is
aware of the future and every
nuance of it is incapable of sacrifice.
The guy who runs into the building
to save his son would never do it
if he knew positively they would
both die. That wouldn't be a sacrifice,
that would be stupidity.

Similarly, a god who knows the
outcome of events positively is
not a sacrificer, he's a chess player
and a manipulator. That's what
the gods we make up do, they
manipulate and play games with
us because we're just so darned
fascinating to them.

That's how we stroke our huge
egos, we invent gods who are
totally in love with us. That's
how ridiculously insecure we
are as humans.

Judaism is the first religion to believe that God is in love with us. Before that like you said it was made up stories about gods more egotistical than anyone and demanding all kinds of things without a care for humanity. All that changes when the one true God reveals Himself as one who loves first the chosen people and then through Jesus Christ, the world.

Maybe a God who never became incarnate is incapable of sacrifice, but a God fully human and fully divine surely can.

Quote: FrGamble

Judaism is the first religion to believe that God is in love with us. Before that

You think Yahweh isn't made up?
He's a conglomeration of all
the Hebrew and Pagan
gods of 1300BC condensed
into one god for convenience.
You know this.

Sounds pretty made up to me:

"Features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahweh religion, Asherah possibly becoming embodied in the feminine aspects of the Shekinah or divine presence, and Baal's nature as a storm and weather god becoming assimilated into Yahweh's own identification with the storm. In the next stage the Yahweh religion separated itself from its Canaanite heritage, first by rejecting Baal-worship in the 9th century, then through the 8th to 6th centuries with prophetic condemnation of Baal, the asherim, sun-worship, worship on the "high places", practices pertaining to the dead, and other matters."

Quote:

Maybe a God who never became incarnate is incapable of sacrifice, but a God fully human and fully divine surely can.

So you not only get to make up a
god, of course you get to make up
the rules surrounding him. Like
a Parker Bros game with the
instructions under the lid. How
you get people to believe this
folly falls under 'shame on them'
for being so gullible.

Quote: FrGamble

Judaism is the first religion to believe that God is in love with us. Before that like you said it was made up stories about gods more egotistical than anyone and demanding all kinds of things without a care for humanity. All that changes when the one true God reveals Himself as one who loves first the chosen people and then through Jesus Christ, the world.

Maybe a God who never became incarnate is incapable of sacrifice, but a God fully human and fully divine surely can.

So you are saying that the hero of this story who is so omnipotent that nothing can scratch him, has to use super powers to create a situation and a time when something can scratch him, so he can know what his little creations feel when they get nailed to a board? Seems like a lot of trouble, why doesn't he just know without having to invent all that stuff?

It reminds me of superman and kryptonite a bit. He has to invent himself as someone else , and invent a time that isn't, so he can feel what he doesn't, for love? That doesn't sound all that clever.

Quote: petroglyph

It reminds me of superman and kryptonite a bit. He has to invent himself as someone else , and invent a time that isn't, so he can feel what he doesn't, for love? That doesn't sound all that clever.

We have to remember, this is all
reverse engineered. First they
had to come up with the myth,
gradually add details over the
decades, then they had to come
up a story for why some god
would do this.

The story makes no sense for
an all/everything god. No such
god who knows everything
would ever do this, it's folly
made up by men who don't
understand the concepts they're
dealing with.