The "Ransom Sacrifice" short version.

by Norm 103 Replies latest jw friends

Norm

In the Christian part of the world not many of us have escaped the much hyped and published “sacrifice” Christ supposedly made when the Romans executed him.
I myself was going around for years parroting this strange concept without giving it much thought. Thinking and faith some times do not mix very well.
Anyway, apparently God made a royal blunder when he created the first humans and they plunged mankind into death and despair first crack out of the box, while God stood by and watched helplessly. Then we are told that God for this reason, in his infinite wisdom took mankind for ransom for thousands of years.
Mankind, (mostly Israel of course, the others didn’t matter) struggled on without any “hope” of any kind. Thousands of years passed while mankind cried out to God in their anguish but he was powerless to help them, they were born, grew up and died, and they thought dying sucked and didn’t like it one bit. He had to get someone to pay his ransom “price”. Of course he couldn’t settle for a nice bowl of salad as the price. Only blood would do.
The Israelites was probably also tired of the endless butchering of animals to keep “sin” from the door. All the animal sacrifice didn’t cut it. Of course only the sacrifice of a “perfect” human being would do.
Then God came up with this marvellous scheme. He was of course tired of all the complaining from mankind being held for ransom by him, but then he had an idea.
I will get a son for myself, and then get him tortured and murdered, that ought to do it; that’s a fair price, voila, you are all free, no more dying, no more problems, wow!
Make a lot of sense, eh?
Norm.
RR

The problem with this thinking is ... it limited the power of God. The Watchtower under the leadership of Rutherford have long held that Jehovah's knowledge is limited, or rather he chooses it to be limited.
In other words, that God has an eternal purpose, as oppose to the biblical view that God has a Divine Plan.
A purpose requires nothing other then a beginning and an outcome. The JW's are taught that God did not know Adam would sin and bring condemnation into the world, so he had to think of a quick solution to rectify it, he thought up "plan a", but Satanm soon threw a wrench into it, so he had to think of "plan b" and so on.
Thus our existence is merely a "cat and mouse" game between the two great entities, a mere chess game between Jehovah and Satan.
In the biblical view of God having a Divine Plan, God in all his wisdom, KNEW, that in creating life as free moral agents, the possibility was that they could decide to sin, so he made a way out for them, through his Son.
So unlike the Watchtowres purpose, where God really has no control, just trying to keep up to Satan, the scriptures teach us that God is in complete control, and everything is going acording to his plans.
_______________
Less Religion and more Jesus!
JAVA

Another great post Norm!
I see the Spirit is working in you again. All civilized nations have laws against human sacrifice, but we have a different set of rules if God acts less than human--go figure! If God allowed his son to be murdered because He "so loved the world," it's little wonder JWs pray for the day when God will really show His love by murdering over 5 billion people. Eating the wrong fruit or not selling The Watchtower gets us in big trouble.
--JAVA
aChristian

Norm,
Thank you for starting a thread which gives Christians an opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.
The Bible tells us that God loves us all and wants us all to live with him forever. But it also tells us that God, being God, has incredibly high standards when it comes to handing out immortality. It tells us God only gives immortality to those who meet the incredibly high standards of a perfect God.
So, here God met His own "catch-22." You see, God did not want to create robots who had to do things His way. He wanted to give us all the freedom to make our own decisions in life. But in doing so, He had no choice but to create a race of people who would all be less righteous than Himself. How so? God cannot act unrighteously. But since His free creations would have both the ability to act unrighteously and often, at least on an experimental basis, the desire to do so, they would all be by their own created nature less righteous than God. And thus, they would all be undeserving of eternal life.
So, what was God to do? His own incredibly high standards as God said that only those who were as righteous as He was were deserving of the ultimate gift, immortality. Thus, by God's standards, anyone who was less righteous than God would have to eventually die. For even though God gives us all the gift of life, He has chosen to give only the righteous eternal life. The Bible tells us that God found a way around His "Catch 22." It tells us He decided that, since all unrighteousness was deserving of death, and that only righteous ones were deserving of eternal life, He could pay all of our death penalties for us by sending His perfectly righteous Son to die in the place of each one of us. Just as the Bible tells us that to God each one of us is worth the lives of many sparrows, so the death of His one perfectly righteous Son would be worth more in paying the price for our unrighteousness than all of our own deaths put together.
So God sent his Son to die in our place and pay the death penalty which we all deserve for our own unrighteousness. He then offered that payment as a gift, along with the gift of immortality which automatically comes with that payment. He then told us that all we have to do is accept that payment as an accomplished reality and then God will consider the penalty for our unrighteousness to have been paid. Of course, someone who really believes this to be true can't help but be affected by God's great love towards them. When a person truly accepts on faith what God has done for them through Jesus Christ's sacrificial death, their life begins to change. The Bible tells us God then gives them His Holy Spirit to help them successfully live their new lives as believers in Jesus Christ. At that time they are truly "born again."
Some have said that this amounts to God not creating us free at all. They say that, in effect, God is saying, "Do things my way or I will kill you." But He is not. He is saying, "I have already given you a gift, the gift of life. Now I want to give you an even better gift, eternal life. All you have to do is accept it. And to do that, all you have to do is believe in the way I purchased it for you."
The Bible's first human drama tells how two people in paradise were unable to live righteous lives even when it came to obeying a very small and very simple command from God. This story of Adam and Eve clearly demonstrated mankind's inability to live up to God's righteous standards. And it demonstrated mankind's need for a Savior whose later sacrifice would make it possible for God to overlook all of our unrighteouness and consider us worthy of eternal life.
The historical accounts recorded in the Old Testament continually made the point that sin causes death and they continually pointed to the time God would provide mankind a way to escape from sin's condemnation to death, the time when He would accept the death of His own Son as payment in full for all of our unrighteousness. They did so by showing that God always required death to pay for sin (God accepted Able's sacrifice and not Cain's) and by showing that God was willing to temporarily overlook the sins of people when the lives of animals were sacrificed to pay for their sins.
The New Testament tells the story of Jesus Christ and how all of the Old Testaments "types" and prophecies were fulfilled in Him. The New Testament tells the story of God's great love for us, a love so great He was willing to let His only begotten Son die in order to pay the price for all of our unrighteousness.
Many scoff at the idea that Christ died to buy us eternal life. Of them Paul said, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the 'foolishness' of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." (1 Corinthians 1:18 -25)
JAVA

aChristian,
I find it incredible to think that an all-powerful, extremely wise God would put Himself into a "catch-22" situation that forces Him into having His perfect son murdered! I don't claim being the smartest person on the block, but if there is a God, I believe He/She has a few more scoops of raisins than that.
I'm not discounting the topic of God aChristian, but I think "the incredibly high standards of a perfect God" is greatly diminished when human sacrifice is His best plan.
--JAVA
TR

Good topic, Norm.
If there is a God, I think it is a sick and depraved act to create life knowing what unspeakable evil would happen. All the words of comfort do nothing to prevent sick and foul crimes from happening to innocent people.
If there was a situation where you could save a life, or prevent an evil from happening, would you take action? Of course! As an imperfect human, I would try do what's necessary. But what does God do? Not a fricken' thing. Think of every sick and vile thing that could happen to a person, and it probably has already been done. Did God step in to prevent the rape and murder? NO! Did God step in and prevent the mass murder of innocents during war? NO! Did God step in and prevent the slow torture of a person just for the fun of it? NO!
What a crock. Religion is bullshit. An excuse to believe there is some sort of divine intervention. None of the lame reasons for God's actions or inactions excuse his unwillingness to intervene when necessary. What's God going to say to the "resurrected" ones that were raped, murdered, or tortured to death? "Oh well, your alive now! Sorry about the raped, murdered, tortured thing!" What a bunch of SHIT!
TR
Norm

Hi aChristian
You said:
Norm,
Thank you for starting a thread which gives Christians an opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.
The Bible tells us that God loves us all and wants us all to live with him forever. But it also tells us that God, being God, has incredibly high standards when it comes to handing out immortality. It tells us God only gives immortality to those who meet the incredibly high standards of a perfect God.
So, here God met His own "catch-22." You see, God did not want to create robots who had to do things His way. He wanted to give us all the freedom to make our own decisions in life. But in doing so, He had no choice but to create a race of people who would all be less righteous than Himself. How so? God cannot act unrighteously. But since His free creations would have both the ability to act unrighteously and often, at least on an experimental basis, the desire to do so, they would all be by their own created nature less righteous than God. And thus, they would all be undeserving of eternal life.

Wow! Did you make up all of this yourself? It is always amusing to watch the amazing discipline of excusogetics in full flight. The almighty God put himself in a catch 22 situation and he HAD to put out a flawed product? Who forced God to create anything? Aren’t you kind of contradicting the Bible here? According to the Bible God seemed pretty pleased with the product himself:
*** Rbi8 Genesis 1:27 ***
And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
*** Rbi8 Genesis 1:31 ***
31 After that God saw everything he had made and, look! [it was] very good.
Are you saying this was some kind of lab experiment on God’s part?
So, what was God to do? His own incredibly high standards as God said that only those who were as righteous as He was were deserving of the ultimate gift, immortality. Thus, by God's standards, anyone who was less righteous than God would have to eventually die. For even though God gives us all the gift of life, He has chosen to give only the righteous eternal life. The Bible tells us that God found a way around His "Catch 22." It tells us He decided that, since all unrighteousness was deserving of death, and that only righteous ones were deserving of eternal life, He could pay all of our death penalties for us by sending His perfectly righteous Son to die in the place of each one of us. Just as the Bible tells us that to God each one of us is worth the lives of many sparrows, so the death of His one perfectly righteous Son would be worth more in paying the price for our unrighteousness than all of our own deaths put together.
I see, so God deliberately made a “catch 22” and then he had to find a way around it. Thank you for confirming the point from my original post. Make sense eh? God HAD to make mankind “sinners” worthy only of death, then in order to circumvent this impossible situation he came up with an even more ludicrous idea of how to undo the complete mess he had made in the first place? This is getting better and better.
So God sent his Son to die in our place and pay the death penalty which we all deserve for our own unrighteousness. He then offered that payment as a gift, along with the gift of immortality which automatically comes with that payment. He then told us that all we have to do is accept that payment as an accomplished reality and then God will consider the penalty for our unrighteousness to have been paid. Of course, someone who really believes this to be true can't help but be affected by God's great love towards them. When a person truly accepts on faith what God has done for them through Jesus Christ's sacrificial death, their life begins to change. The Bible tells us God then gives them His Holy Spirit to help them successfully live their new lives as believers in Jesus Christ. At that time they are truly "born again."
Again, God created us unrighteous? If he knowingly created us to fail, how can he blame us as unworthy of eternal life? If his original intension was to create human beings worthy of eternal life, why didn’t do that in the first place? Don’t you understand how completely out to lunch your “explanation” are?
Some have said that this amounts to God not creating us free at all. They say that, in effect, God is saying, "Do things my way or I will kill you." But He is not. He is saying, "I have already given you a gift, the gift of life. Now I want to give you an even better gift, eternal life. All you have to do is accept it. And to do that, all you have to do is believe in the way I purchased it for you."
LOL. If God wanted us to have eternal life, he could of course have given it to us straight away. You portray God as a complete idiot who HAD to stage this confused and elaborate experiment causing enormous sufferings for the entire mankind. According to you we HAVE to accept this complete nonsense to get “eternal life”. God must really be embarrassed.
The Bible's first human drama tells how two people in paradise were unable to live righteous lives even when it came to obeying a very small and very simple command from God. This story of Adam and Eve clearly demonstrated mankind's inability to live up to God's righteous standards. And it demonstrated mankind's need for a Savior whose later sacrifice would make it possible for God to overlook all of our unrighteouness and consider us worthy of eternal life.
Of course they failed. According to you, God had created them for that purpose, they just performed as expected. How could God blame them for working according to his design?
The historical accounts recorded in the Old Testament continually made the point that sin causes death and they continually pointed to the time God would provide mankind a way to escape from sin's condemnation to death, the time when He would accept the death of His own Son as payment in full for all of our unrighteousness. They did so by showing that God always required death to pay for sin (God accepted Able's sacrifice and not Cain's) and by showing that God was willing to temporarily overlook the sins of people when the lives of animals were sacrificed to pay for their sins.
So now you tell me that Adam and Eve was historical persons? If God intended to provide mankind with a way to escape sin he could have created them perfect in the first place, and spared mankind all of the problems and suffering.
The New Testament tells the story of Jesus Christ and how all of the Old Testaments "types" and prophecies were fulfilled in Him. The New Testament tells the story of God's great love for us, a love so great He was willing to let His only begotten Son die in order to pay the price for all of our unrighteousness.
Taking your “explanation” serious I am unable to see much love on God’s part. Instead he plunged his poor creation into thousands of years of horrible suffering and pain. I am a mere human being but if I had the supposed power of God I would never had allowed Hitler and Stalin to carry out their horrible deeds. If God has done what you are telling us here, it is a great monument of his complete lack of love for anyone. You paint a picture of a pretty sick, twisted and insensitive entity oblivious to the problems of mankind.
Many scoff at the idea that Christ died to buy us eternal life. Of them Paul said, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the 'foolishness' of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." (1 Corinthians 1:18 -25)
Have you ever thought about what Paul actually says there? Does it make any sense? Of course even in Paul’s days some of his contemporaries were able to recognize bullshit when they heard it. Paul didn’t like people who saw though the drivel he was talking so he came up with insane rants like this. When you read texts like one above and think at the same time you realize what incredible nonsense it is.
I am afraid your attempt at an “explanation” here is in the best tradition of Paul.
Norm.
JanH

RR,
So unlike the Watchtowres purpose, where God really has no control, just trying to keep up to Satan, the scriptures teach us that God is in complete control, and everything is going acording to his plans.

Now what a reassuring idea! The black death, the inquisition, dhengis khan's devastations, the countless famines, pestilences and horrible tragedies that have befallen humankind, including the holocaust, it is all going according to God's Great Master Plan (of course, noone comes close to telling what this plan is).
I'm sure that the victims of God's little killer agents are very relieved to learn that their suffering and agony is all due to a great plan by an omnipotent deity, as opposed to random bad luck.
It's always fascinating to see Christians and other supernaturalists at work trying to explain the horror of suffering, and then trying to reconcile this with their belief in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent Creator-God. The hoops of logic, squirming, huh-ha'ing and bad excuses are a spectacle to behold. I even invented a word for it some time ago: excusogetics. I'm glad the word has caught on, cause it is really descriptive of a sad process at work.
There are two general lines of argument when the Christians tries to reconcile the reality of suffering with the postulated existence of a God.
First, we have those who somehow thinks throwing around the word "free will" explains anything. This seems to be what aChristian does above. A word like "free will" means so much and so little that Christians think they have escaped the quandry just by throwing it around. Interestingly, in earlier times theologists were well aware that any sane application of the "free will" argument violates God's omnipotence, and still doesn't explain much anyway. That is why pelagianism was denounced as heresy by Augustine, and that is why Luther and Calvin both denied that there is such a thing as free will.
What is "free will"? Does it mean that humans can do whatever they want? Can I fly to Mars? Can I decide to live forever? Could I write a symphony to eclipse Mozart's 40th? Of course not. Humans possibly have a will, but it is never and was never free. It is constrained by the forces of nature, by the limitations of both our brain and our bodies.
Knowing this, we see how utterly shallow the "free will" argument is. Christian apologists will have us believe that if God interfered and stopped Hitler's murder of millions of people, that would have infringed on the Führer's "free will." How come? Hitler was already constrained by the limits reality (which allegedly was created by God!) placed on his powers. Some Jews, after all, were able to escape and survive. Hitler lost the war. The tank divisions of the Allies severly restricted Hitler's "free will", ending in his premature death at his own hands. How could a discrete intervention by a supreme God be more of a restriction of whatever "free will" he had? And what, more importantly, about the alleged "free will" of his millions of victims? Many had no choice in the matter of being exterminated.
"God didn't want to create robots," we hear the apologists say. People had freedom to do evil things, and God could not restrict this without making humans into complete automatons. Thus, in this world, Christian apologists have been forced to assert that either humans have to be totally free of god's restrictions, or they are helpless slaves. No middle ground. What, then, about the future? All Christian systems of belief have an after-life, where humans live (either in heaven or on earth) in eternal bliss. Does this mean God will finally put an end to free will? No, I have never heard a Christian apologist say that. After all, if he disposes of free will in the future, what good does it do us now? Will this afterlife then be full of suffering, death and evil? No, what would be the point, then?
So we see that Christian apologia is totally self-defeating. If God cannot create a world where happiness coexists with free will now, then he can't do that in the future either. The whole afterlife dream is a bluff; the hell on earth will just be repeated in the next life. Alternatively, then, God could make this life happy and free of suffering, without infringing on any "free will". Thus, we see that the "free will" argument above totally evaporates.
We are then left with the final possible argument of Christian apologetics, or may I say excusogetics: God wants the world to be like it is, suffering and all. This position is sometimes called Calvinism, but it was taught by Augustine and Luther as well. It states that free will is an illusion, that suffering is the will of god, and that God elects who will be saved and who will be tortured forever based on divine whim. This position does not really answer the problem of suffering, it simply postulates that God is evil. People who chose to follow an evil deity have thus labeled themselves, since men makes gods in their own image.
- Jan
--
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein
Julie

Hi there aChristian,
You said something that I son't understand.
:God cannot act unrighteously.
As I am sure you know there is a great deal of unrighteousness in the bible, especially the OT. God apparently didn't have a problem with "his people" slaughtering entire races, in fact wasn't this sort of thing greatly rewarded? Or how about the guy who was told by his father to go and impregnate his dead brother's wife? The brother didn't think this was too kosher so he pulled out of the deal at the last minute. Maybe he was just following the law in Leviticus about not laying with your brother's wife. Apparently that rule is only a "sometimes" rule because, according to the bible, God struck this poor guy dead for not making his brother's wife pregnant.
And finally, I would like to think that a righteous God would love all people at all times. During OT times he seemed to rather hate everyone of his children except of course the Israelites.
I know humans who are much more righteous than the God the bible portrays. If what you say is true, that God cannot act unrighteously, than this simply adds credibilty to the argument that the bible is not God's word.
Julie
aChristian

Jan,
You asked, "What, then, about the future? All Christian systems of belief have an after-life, where humans live (either in heaven or on earth) in eternal bliss. Does this mean God will finally put an end to free will?"
As you may recall, the Bible tells us that when Christ returns all Christians, the living and the dead, will be made both immortal and incorruptible. (1 Cor. 15) That being the case, they will then be able, of their own free will, to eternally live perfectly righteous lives, something Christians have always had the desire to do but not the ability to do.

The "Ransom Sacrifice" short version.

--JAVA

--JAVA

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