Vandeervecken
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He Died For Our Sins…So what?
According to Christianity, all men should be thankful that Jesus Christ died for our sins. They claim that by God taking on human form, suffering, and dying on the cross that humanity can be absolved of our sins and gain eternal paradise. The only requirement is belief in Christ. Do the facts presented in the Bible support this belief or is this a falsehood?
Let us accept two postulates from the Christian point of view:
A: The Christian 3-in-1 God exists as defined within the Bible – Eternal, Omnipotent, Omniscient
and Omnipresent. (We’ll ignore the logical inconsistencies in this definition)
B: Christ was God on Earth become human.
Given that God is indeed eternal, we must accept that His time sense matches His life span. Therefore, Christ’s life span of 30 some odd years would be the equivalent of much less than the blink of an eye to a human. Also, per the Bible, God’s normal domain is the eternal perfection of Heaven; if perfection is a term that can be assigned to a place the Bible defines as having wars. We must also accept the Biblical stories of God’s Wrath upon man – the flood, the drowning of the Pharaoh’s troops, the slaughter of the residents of Jericho, and many other Kingdoms. Therefore, we are told to be thankful that this super being left his perfect home for an equivalent-instant, suffered far less than he has inflicted upon countless millions, and went home.
However, we will accept the Biblical command to be thankful and examine the 4 possibilities to explain the ‘rules’ under which God became human:
1:Upon becoming human, God became fully and completely human, losing all powers and forgetting that he ever was God. This is not possible – Christ said several times that he was the Son of God and thus God himself. If the Bible provides accurate reports, he performed several miracles utilizing godlike powers.
2: Upon becoming human, God became fully and completely human, losing all powers and forgetting that he ever was God until his 30’s when he suddenly remembered. As above, this is not possible for the same reasons.
3: Upon becoming human, God retained his knowledge and powers as God. However, if this is true, why isn’t the Bible filled with stories of the Child-Christ performing miracles? Changing his milk to wine, that sort of thing. However, this case cannot be eliminated out of hand.
4: Christ is not God but was deluded into believing that he was God. This would explain the lack of information on Christ’s early years.
There are two comments that Christ made that must be reconciled with these two remaining possibilities and the above postulates:
1: Christ asked God to allow his fate to pass him by.
2: Christ accused God of forsaking him while he was on the cross.
If the above Case 3 is true, then we have the image of Christ asking himself to allow his fate to pass him by. Further, he also accuses himself of abandoning himself. Working with the above postulates, we also have a being that knows the future asking himself to change that future – although he knows that this does not happen. Unless Christ – and thus God – is insane, this cannot true. This leaves us with only Case 4 – Christ is not God. If Christ is not God, then believing in him cannot provide us with salvation, and so there is no real point to that belief.
According to Christianity, all men should be thankful that Jesus Christ died for our sins. They claim that by God taking on human form, suffering, and dying on the cross that humanity can be absolved of our sins and gain eternal paradise. The only requirement is belief in Christ. Do the facts presented in the Bible support this belief or is this a falsehood?
Let us accept two postulates from the Christian point of view:
A: The Christian 3-in-1 God exists as defined within the Bible – Eternal, Omnipotent, Omniscient
and Omnipresent. (We’ll ignore the logical inconsistencies in this definition)
B: Christ was God on Earth become human.
Given that God is indeed eternal, we must accept that His time sense matches His life span. Therefore, Christ’s life span of 30 some odd years would be the equivalent of much less than the blink of an eye to a human. Also, per the Bible, God’s normal domain is the eternal perfection of Heaven; if perfection is a term that can be assigned to a place the Bible defines as having wars. We must also accept the Biblical stories of God’s Wrath upon man – the flood, the drowning of the Pharaoh’s troops, the slaughter of the residents of Jericho, and many other Kingdoms. Therefore, we are told to be thankful that this super being left his perfect home for an equivalent-instant, suffered far less than he has inflicted upon countless millions, and went home.
However, we will accept the Biblical command to be thankful and examine the 4 possibilities to explain the ‘rules’ under which God became human:
1:Upon becoming human, God became fully and completely human, losing all powers and forgetting that he ever was God. This is not possible – Christ said several times that he was the Son of God and thus God himself. If the Bible provides accurate reports, he performed several miracles utilizing godlike powers.
2: Upon becoming human, God became fully and completely human, losing all powers and forgetting that he ever was God until his 30’s when he suddenly remembered. As above, this is not possible for the same reasons.
3: Upon becoming human, God retained his knowledge and powers as God. However, if this is true, why isn’t the Bible filled with stories of the Child-Christ performing miracles? Changing his milk to wine, that sort of thing. However, this case cannot be eliminated out of hand.
4: Christ is not God but was deluded into believing that he was God. This would explain the lack of information on Christ’s early years.
There are two comments that Christ made that must be reconciled with these two remaining possibilities and the above postulates:
1: Christ asked God to allow his fate to pass him by.
2: Christ accused God of forsaking him while he was on the cross.
If the above Case 3 is true, then we have the image of Christ asking himself to allow his fate to pass him by. Further, he also accuses himself of abandoning himself. Working with the above postulates, we also have a being that knows the future asking himself to change that future – although he knows that this does not happen. Unless Christ – and thus God – is insane, this cannot true. This leaves us with only Case 4 – Christ is not God. If Christ is not God, then believing in him cannot provide us with salvation, and so there is no real point to that belief.
