Sunday, August 17, 2008

Jesus so called sacrifice?

I want to talk about the supposed incredible sacrifice that Jesus made for us by virtue of the fact that he “died to save us from our sins” This central belief is the most sacred belief that Christians hold. They are drawn to tears upon reminiscing about this sacrifice and the incredible thing god did for them. But is it really a sacrifice? Consider this, god is omniscient right? Which means he knows the future. That means that he knew that his son/self would come back to life and be with him on his right hand forever. So there was no risk whatsoever. Don’t you see it folks? Really consider this. A single firefighter who saves the life of a child is a thousand times more of a sacrifice and risk then what Jesus/god did. That is because the firefighter does not know that he will live, he may die. How much easier would it have been for this firefighter if he knew that he had magic powers and could not be killed? Torture is terrible sure, but Jesus knew that he would be coming back to life soon, and the god part of himself sitting in heaven looking down knew it too. Jesus suffering pales in comparison to other suffering in the world. I love the quote that says “Jesus had a bad afternoon for our sins” Millions upon millions of people have suffered greater….cancer victims, the hostages in columbia, our brave soldiers in Iraq some who will live out the rest of their days with their bodies broken, and nightmares that no amount of therapy can put an end to….the list goes on and on. Countless numbers of brave Americans have given everything so that I can sit here on my state of the art IMac and type this stuff out, their sacrifice is real, it is tangible, and it does move me to tears at times. Once again because I want you guys to really think about this….lets take the case of a solider, where is the sacrifice of a soldier if the solider and his father knew that he was going to be killed and then 48 hours later he would come back to life because he had magic powers. There is not much sacrifice in that example folks, tell me how the Jesus sacrifice is different.

3 comments:

dole2obama said...

Big guy-
This is a very good, thought-provoking question. Is this what it means to play "devil's advocate"? Holy geez, I hope I am not close when the lightning strikes.
P.S. Don't take any guff from anyone. Many people have thought about the same things but were too frightened to ever express these doubts publicly. Just watch out for the guff.

Grandma Dee said...

Great food for thought, Garrett. You do handle the tough ones! Love you, Denise

Baptist_Mike_in_Utah said...

Good post Garrett,
It is a question that many people have. But it has to be taken with spiritual mindset, not a humanistic one. We can justify or make a case for just about anything from astriclty humanistic mindset.
The fact or opinion (whichever you choose) that Jesus died on the cross was not a sacrifice for God but for man. Jesus knew he would be ressurected as he pointed it out before it happened. The part that was suffering for Jesus was that he took on the sins of the world, being a perfect God that cannot that cannot sin he took ours for us. When Christ died he took my sins and your sins and Bill Mahers sins and George Carlins and Osama Bin Laden etc and put them on His account.
Please dont get confused and think that the sacrifice was for God, it was for us. He made available a perfect sacrifice for our sins. It is up to us whether we will put our faith in that sacrifice and have the blood applied to our sins or not.
By the way to sacrifice my life for another is not a big deal, because I too know that I will live forever. I worry much more for the lives of others who may not have such assurance. It is only a sacrifice for someone if they do not trust God's Word.