fast

According to the bible, God, with all his mighty powers allowed his very own little boy get tortured. Theists find no problems with this. For arguments sake, I'll pretend there is a God, but please explain to me how daddy can let such a thing happen to his son.

I'll be as open-minded as I dare!

post tenebras lux

Gets tortured!! I think you're thinking too much like a theist there. Rationally, how much pain could a bunch of mortal humans cause to an OmniMax being by 'torturing' him.

And why would an OmniMax being give a fig about being 'dead' for two or three days, when he has eternity in both directions?

But then, maybe I'm just confused. After all, do Christians really claim that (at least under certain circumstances) we mortal men can torture and kill an OmniMax God?

Luxie

Toto

As I understand it, Christians have a complicated explanation which always invokes "it's a mystery" when it gets into trouble.

But God voluntarily took on human form and participated in human suffering, for some reason relating to freeing humans from something.

E.g.

Heb 2:14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

I don't know how much Biblical criticism will help you here, since I think later church doctrine has more to say about this, if the subject is really serious. If this doesn't get more response, the thread can be moved to GRD.

fast

Let me get this straight.

1 God (all powerful) deligated some powers to his son (christ):
2 Christ (powerful) had the power of death (the devil).
3 The reason God gave his son this power was so that his son (not God) could rid the world of evil
4 God allowed Christ to become crucified.

Help me lay this out before I start arguing. I have to be missing something here.

Apparently something makes sense to theists. What exactly is suppossed to make sense. Seriously, I'm not trying to scew anything -- I just want to understand what it is theists are actually believing here.

exile

Not only that but Jesus is man and god. Only a man can feel pain - not a god, obviously - and only a man can die - not a god, gods being immortal.

So, God was not sacrificing himself - but the human element of Jesus, who
derived from Mary and not him, and thus can hardly be said to be his Son.

fast

this isn't the christian interpretation -- I think it's not anyways

edain55337

This was the interpretation I recieved when I went to Sunday School. It's been awhile and my memory might be kind of weak, so bare with me...

Remember that old sacrificial lamb thing? That kinda bares with it. Remember the tree of Life in the old Garden? That comes into play as well...

Supposedly part of that old original sin bit was that death came into play. Now God, being all powerful and such like kinda felt bad for the whole "Get out and stay out!" so he wanted to make it up to everyone.

Well, the only way you can beat death is coming back from it. And the only way you can come back from it is if you die first.

:huh:

...needless to say I was told to shut up and quit asking questions.... after all, God knows what's going on and you shouldn't ask questions. I tried to use that excuse in school when I didn't know the answer to a question. Didn't get a high mark in that class!

Sensei Meela

[corrections in bold]
What, exactly, doesn't make sense?

In my understanding, God set-up His rules so that a violation of the rules (sin) results in death for the violater (sinner). God's rules allowed the violater (sinner) to eschew death (mercy) through the offering of a blood sacrifice. Rather than change the rules, God elected to provide a blood sacrifice that would cover the violations (sins) of all violaters (sinners) who opted in on the deal (Christians); this provision is not deserved (grace). Therefore the grace of God allows Him to have mercy on Christians. One day, God will come to prevent any further violations of His rules by destroying all non-Christians.

The reasons why He chose this means are inscrutible.

exile

Hallelujah!

I'd better pack my asbestos underwear.

To be honest, the doctrine you just proposed makes me want to vomit.

rudolk

The way it was explained to me was that god created jesus, then let him die to both rid the world of sin, and to go through the ultimate suffering of losing his son...though it was just the human part and they're now chillin in heaven. This allows god ultimate compassion when dealing with those of us not lucky enough to be half divine. Though I'm sure the human part of jesus was completely wasted during the whole crucifiction [sic], so it couldn't have hurt him that bad. Though if I were the human part of god's son and he let me through that in the name of such "lofty" ideals, I'd be right pissed at him.

Kurt