O
Oberon
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It certainly looks rather recursive, doesn't it. But who can really change his worldview by a simple act of will?
It certainly looks rather recursive, doesn't it. But who can really change his worldview by a simple act of will?
We're supposed to have choice over what we believe.
I am profoundly unconvinced of that.
Our beliefs are shaped irrevocably by our experience and our response to it, only part of which (at most) is influenced by volition. Or so my experience tells me.
I'm sorry to say, but the Jesus character died because it made for a better storyline.
People still love "Miracle on 34th Street" but Santa didn't have to die.
Okay, so really the reason Jesus had to die was because Jews are assholes.
What kinda story would it be if Jesus just hopped off the cross and went home to eat a sandwich or something? The "He died for our sins" bit was probably the most significant part in the tale.
Did Jesus ever talk about how he would be freeing us all from this judgment through his death?
I don't remember him every saying that, does he say it at the resurrection?
Well, check out this passage from Luke 4.
The passage was understood to refer to the Messiah. In context, Jesus was standing up and saying "This book of Isaiah that you've worked so hard to memorize? It's about me."
In the book of Isaiah it says that the Messiah will die for the sins of the world and allow us into heaven where we only have to say we're sorry?
Did Jesus ever talk about how he would be freeing us all from this judgment through his death?
I don't remember him every saying that, does he say it at the resurrection?
In light of the mystery involved here, there is an interesting idea put forward by the Apostle Paul...actually scholars speculate that this was part of an ancient christian hymn or credo that Paul was quoting from....the idea is that Christ was exalted not because he died a horrible, bloody death (lots of people were scourged/crucified back then), but because he "did not count equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself, took the form of a servant, becoming obedient even to death, death on a cross." So here the idea of becoming a servant....or even God becoming a servant...comes into play. This, some theologians say, is why Christ was exalted and "given a name above every other name"....not the blood-letting, but the "not grasping" (as in letting go)....the becoming a servant.
Really, religious jargon may be betraying us big time here.....we say "Jesus suffered and died on a cross." Fine.....yet it is more accurate to the real meaning of things to say "Jesus became a servant".....or "Jesus was obedient in mediating a new covenant out of love." This puts the whole thing in a different light. There are many aspects of the story that we have become far to comfortable with....they have become hopelessly trite. A reinvestigation is in order.
The crucifixion, in the end, may have been less about God's justice and malice being righted and more about repairing something so cosmically broken that extreme measures of love were required. Where evil was born out of extremes of pride, evil is vanquished by extremes of service and humility. In many ways what Jesus did in his life and death was to pull back a veil on reality.....on the way things are....not christian reality, or Catholic reality, or Jewish reality, or Buddist reality.....but cosmic reality. In this world view...love and concern is at the epicenter.
Whatever happened....both in Jesus' birth, miracles, and death, some seriously unexplained stuff was going on, and the eyewitnesses cannot credibly be discounted in many cases...enough to make one wonder. Even as concerns Jesus' death...we also have every reason to seriously look at the fact that this man could have (as reported) risen from the dead. That, then, would be the other half of the mystery....in giving, we receive....and that plays out in massively cosmic ways too!!
But that may be for another thread.