God, our loving Father, made Man and Woman flawed. He could have made us perfect but chose not to. Don’t bother asking why. Just having a bad day, maybe. God would not make a very good clinical psychologist. With forethought if not malice he laid temptation in our path. Just what the Lord’s Prayer, not yet written, asks him not to do. “Lead us not into temptation,” says the Lord’s Prayer. If Adam and Eve had had the Lord’s Prayer to work with things might have turned out differently. Anyway, being omniscient God knew in advance what kind of human dynamics he was setting in motion by introducing temptation. If he didn’t know he could have and should have. Big surprise: being flawed and curious and weak when it comes to temptation, we bit the bait. Bad news. That automatically made all God’s beloved children, present and future, smart as all hell, but sinners, candidates for eternal punishment in Hell. Hell is a place God created...he created everything, remember...to punish human beings who behave like human beings rather than twitty little angels. Hey, God, if you wanted twitty little angels why didn’t you make them instead of us? And don’t blame it all on the Devil. Nobody said you had to make a Devil to keep things screwed up.
Anyway, since all us weak humans became sinners overnight, because God threw temptation in our way, God decided he had better take a shot at correcting the situation. (A delegation from the garment industry came to God’s throne in Heaven and prayed for him to keep people ashamed of their nakedness since it would be good for business. God seems to have accommodated them.)
Did God correct the sin situation by the simple expedient of making a human recall, like a carmaker would do, fix or replace the faulty part and send us safely out into the world again? No.
Instead he decided to bring his one and only Son into the action and teach his Son something about godmanship (if that’s not a self-contradicting word).
“Here’s the plan,” God the Father said to God the Son. “I’m going to send you to Earth, specifically to Judea where my Chosen People the Jews are. While you are there you can do some teaching and healing and other miracles so that at least a few of the folks will get the idea of who you are without you walking around bragging about it. But your main chance will be to get yourself arrested, charged with disturbing the peace or something, and crucified. Crucifixion, in case you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on down there, Son, is the way the Roman governors of Judea punish and dispose of their criminals. What they’ll do is nail you wrist and foot to a wooden cross and leave you there until you die. I can tell you, Son, it is going to hurt like hell. But that’s the point. You’ll be a blood offering. To me, God. Because of your token suffering on the cross for a few hours (I’ll see that it doesn’t last too long) you will in a figurative way be accepting the punishment for everybody’s sins, present and on into the eternal future. Your suffering on the cross will be in lieu of my sending folks to Hell as punishment for their sins. Get it?”
2007-04-15
00:34:51
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14 answers
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asked by
clever investor
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Religion & Spirituality