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All the talk about Jesus 'sacrifice' but no one seems to remember two problems with this idea. First is that it does not make sense why God would want his only son to sacrifice himself in order for God to forgive the sins of humans. That jesus sacrificed himself is not a sacrifice from sinful humans but from jesus, which was god's son and did not carry any fault against god. Secondly, it didnt give humans any appreciable benefit because according to traditional christian doctrine, our sins are still going to be punished in purgatory and hell in a way that is way worse than what jesus endured on the cross. Instead of this incoherent sacrifice, it would have made more sense to kill the devil which continues to lead people into sin, or as the christian story goes.
IMO this fundamentally misunderstands the nature of religion as practiced by real believers. It is not a gotcha logic game, but a spiritual drama that you understand emotionally. Sin demands extreme punishment, and Jesus willingly took our punishment out of an interested love in us individually. This frees us from the extreme punishment of our sins. This can be immediately grasped by everyone: something demanded a bad experience, a great individual out of love for us bore the bad experience to save us from it eternally. This induces feelings of guilt, love, wonder, and so forth.
Theology is just a way to flesh out this emotional dimension to satisfy our thoughts, but the theology is certainly not the point. Theology is the janitorial work to ensure that the point of the religion is clean from worries, hence why understanding theology is not necessary for salvation (withstanding a few simple paragraphs of assent in a creed). And so you have a concept like purgatory: if you die in faith, but never did penance for sins (usually easy stuff btw), there is a purifying punishment for these sins. This punishment is not greater than Jesus’ punishment, which is magnified for a number of reasons that would take a while to explain (his innocence, his being God, his emotional turmoil). Were the punishments equal, Jesus’ sacrifice would still be meaningful in that it grants Christians eternal life and access to God.
As for “why didn’t God kill Satan”, that’s like asking why we are not all already in Heaven. You can ask endless questions that have no quick answer whether you are a theist or an atheist, but theists can at least rest assured that the extra questions are irrelevant to one’s perfect happiness and destiny. I would mention that in the lore, Jesus descends into Hades and kills death itself, which is very cool and underrated.
As for “how could Jesus take our punishment”, this really isn’t problematic: because He was also God, or alternatively because our sins accrue a debt, but really, you just assent that He can to buy into the heart of the religion.
Considering the account of purgatory that christians have developed over the centuries (ie people being burned constantly for years), I would much rather be crucified than have to go through purgatory, so saying that jesus underwent a worse punishment comes off as gaslighting to me.
People ask those questions because they bring up contradictions in the beliefs espoused by the religion, a contradictory set of statements can not be true. God was the one who created Satan in the first place, and if you believe that God is omniscient, then it follows that everything Satan does is allowed by God. Moreover, in society there are consequences imposed for breaking rules, for example death penalty for muggers, in order to deter wrongdoing and remove wrongdoers from society, Satan is according to christians the most consequential wrongdoer in existence, created by and completely subordinate to God, yet God does nothing to deal with him.
It does not make sense if I punish myself to forgive you for your wrongdoing against me. Neither does it make sense if I were to pay to myself the debt you owe to me. Your suggestion to just assent to that notion is effectively telling people to disregard reason when it conflicts with christian dogma, but christianity can not overrule reason, because you must exercise reason to be a christian in the first place, ie to understand what christianity demands and whether you are acting in accordance with those demands.
Purgatory is not endless fire that can be compared to this world, though; it’s a cleansing fire that “burns off” any horrible habits that have yet to be penance’d. While this is a punishment, it’s not maximal punishment like in Hell. A good example: once as a child while doing a sport I destroyed a nail on my hand, which was halfway off the finger. The pain was unbearable. I went to a doctor who promptly burned it off. The burning off of this wound was not worse than the original pain, neither was it worse than the relief of the solution. If you can understand how a painful procedure fixes a health problem, you can understand how a purgatory can fix a spiritual problem.
The problem with trying to riddle with God is that, by definition, He is greater than anything we can conceive. But riddling again also defeats the purpose of religion. We don’t abstain from walking on bridges because of the high-level problems involving Newtonian physics and the movements of atoms. You don’t flesh out the entirety of philosophy and theology before you assent to a religion, otherwise no one would ever be saved — you can’t read every book a theologian has written.
One the ways that theologians solved this trivial punishment is through a “Satan’s debt” atonement theory. Jesus tricks Satan into taking our place on the Cross; we “owed” Satan a debt due to our sins. Surely you can understand how someone like Jesus can trick Satan, and this requires no further explanation. Another theory is that the Father demands that bad actions are punished, but out of Love the Father allowed the Son to take our punishment, and so by witnessing this happen and witnessing the terrors of sin’s punishments we are saved. There are other atonement theories, and I’m sure you can find one that is persuasion to your own frame of mind. I would just allege that the crucifixion is not correct or incorrect based on an atonement theory; it is correct if it is believed in an emotional reality, because this is the way that it changes a person’s heart (the original Greek meaning of repentance btw).
God’s relation to Satan is, again, argued by theologians. What’s more important to understand is that (1) God, much like science, doesn’t care for you understanding every nuance of His ways, and neither could you understand every nuance in a lifetime; (2) God is beyond our comprehension, hence why the door to eternal life is accessed through faith and not the accumulation of human knowledge.
what do you mean by burning off horrible habits, how does that work? if somebody died having stolen on some occasions, burning in purgatory is not going to reverse any of the thefts he did. and once he gets into heaven why would he need to steal anyway and if he steals in heaven, there is nothing in christianity about being kicked out of heaven, and if there was, purgatory would no longer be needed by your rationalization. the real reason why purgatory is a tenet in christianity is that it provides further deterrence against people breaking its rules, which means it would be included the same whether or not there was a story about jesus dying on the cross to save us.
But if the religion contains contradictions, then it must be false, so why should I bother with it, and why are you lying to people about it?
I have never heard this notion that we owe something to Satan in christianity. And no, its not a convincing story that Jesus tricked Satan like that, because Jesus dying in the cross is not a price paid by anybody except Jesus.
Why not dole out the punishment to satan rather than to his only son? And if its out of love, the more compelling question is why not forgive without having to punish an innocent person?
The reason there are so many theories proposed is because it does not make sense, and that you need to throw a lot of flawed theories so that one is able to slip through the scrutiny filter of an inquirer because of his particular oversights.
God is so different from and incomprehensible from us, yet he seems to care a lot about what we do in our lives, funny how that works. In any case, the most reasonable explanation for why your religion does not make sense is because your religion is fraudulent.
Imagine the world as a reinforcement learning environment that's intended to produce Good Servants of God. Emphasis on willing to serve God. Now the thing is, God doesn't care at all about punishing anyone, it only cares about burning out whatever parts of one's personality that prevented them from obeying His rules. An evil person who rejected God completely will have only a few parts of his personality lifted into the Godhood. A nice person who sinned occasionally and was upset about it will have the sinning part of himself removed, as he wanted all along, and get uploaded mostly intact.
okay but parts of the personality are not burned, if you think that's a metaphor, then you should realize that catholics talk about people actually being burned in purgatory with all its pain, its understood to be a punishment and that is why believers are concerned about it.
in order to change somebody's personality, you need to rewire their brain, this should not be a painful process, and it prompts the question about why god did not do this in their first life.
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