This question always bugged me as a kid sitting in church in those damn, uncomfortable pews. I was always squirming around trying to get comfortable. Anyway, I couldn’t figure it out. Here was Jesus, the Son of God (who to my 12 year-old mind made him stronger than 1000 Supermen) who allowed himself to be nailed on the cross by a bunch of mean, stupid people who didn’t know any better. Why? It didn’t make any sense. He could have made everyone “good” or “happy,” and miraculously created enough food out of thin air for everyone to eat. But he didn’t. And what’s more, I was taught in Sunday School that Jesus told his followers that he would return soon. But he didn’t! Nothing added up and I was beginning to think this Jesus story was a scam.
As I matured into an adult (although my ex-wives would disagree that ever happened), the questions didn’t go away – and after a long, hard look at the question, I finally figured out that Jesus really didn’t have to die.
Jesus didn’t have to die for 2 reasons; (1) He disrespected his own ‘Godhood” in allowing himself to murdered by a bunch of ignorant, cowardly and abusive human beings instead of keeping his life and sorting out the situation and bringing equality and peace to the world. If ‘God’ really wanted to do something about the terrible state of the world at that time, why couldn’t ‘He” come up with a scheme that was actually effective? For 2000 years we have seem that the Death of Jesus contains no moral force that directs humanity to consider each other equally or in peace or in brotherhood. His death has only been used as mind control, domination and money. Nothing good has ever come out of Christianity – it’s always been a den of thieves fighting over all that money.
(2) The act of sending Jesus to clean up the mess made by “God” in creating a world filled with limited, superstitious and easily controllable beings should say something about this ‘God,” character. In the Old Testament, “God” is cruel, vindictive, jealous, spiteful and not very bright. “He’s” more like a child than a supreme being.
There has been much theological smack talk going around about how Jesus proclaims a “God of Love,” who only asks for faith and belief. I don’t much change between the “Gods” of the Old and New Testament. There is one thing that carries over from the OTinto the NT: Child Sacrifice. “God” sends Jesus as a sacrifice just as “He” instructed his followers to do several times in the Old Testament: Here in the book of Exodus 22:28-29
“You shall not delay your fulfillment and your flowing.
“You shall Give Me the firstborn of your sons.
“You shall do this to your ox and to your sheep: Seven days it will be with its mother. On the eighth day you shall give it to me.”
“Giving” here is obviously refers to child sacrifice for the appeasement of “God.”
Num 18:14-15 Every חרם in Israel shall be yours. The first issue of the womb of all creatures, human and animal, which is offered to YHWH, shall be yours; but the firstborn of human beings you shall redeem, and the firstborn of unclean animals you shall redeem.
(the Hebrew “חרם” refers to the destruction of people and things to a deity. ‘Redeem’ is sacrificing – giving the life of the being back to “God.”[1]
In Ezekiel 20:25-26: we have
Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances BY WHICH THEY COULD NOT HAVE LIFE; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born, (aka the Ovens of Moloch) that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know I am YHWH.
Thanks, Zeke, for making that clear. “God” mocks “His” limited, stupid and worthless creations and spitefully gives them instructions, which due to their limitations – they cannot hope to follow – just in order to keep us from having “life.” Sucks to be a human when “God” is such a jerk.
So maybe Jesus didn’t have a choice. For reasons only known to “God,” Jesus (who being part of “God” means “He” ultimately sacrificed “Himself”) had to die. But remarkably, nobody seems to pick up the fact that Jesus’ death has had no effect in changing human beings nor did it make a better world. More suffering than ever followed – and 2000 years after the fact, Black people as religious mind-controlled victims are still waiting for the White Man’s Jesus to return to take us all to Heaven to a fate where “God knows what” will happen to us.
Maybe LUCIFER REBELLED FOR A GOOD REASON.
Just sayin…
[1] Friedman RE. Who Wrote the Bible? San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997.
