Yes! - How to forgive, and how God forgives
Submitted by Jules on January 20 2002 18:00:35
In reply to It is happening today submitted by Nate on January 20 2002 15:30:01
|
Nate, Your response to your church is wonderfully deep and wise. You know you've been hurt, but you realise it's due to human weakness rather than deliberate. You are prepared to take into yourself the hurt caused by other people's weakness, and by doing this you are forgiving them. And that is exactly the way God forgives us! God feels the hurt that all human beings have caused him, whether through anger, through war or through damaging the earth. But he knows that for the most part we have done it because of human weakness, not deliberately. And so he willingly takes the hurt into himself. Jesus demonstrated that this is God's way, on the cross. The cross is the ultimate example of self-sacrifice. It's where we see that at the centre of God's heart is the willingness to suffer the worst that we humans could throw at him. We must get away from this horrible idea of the cross being some sort of appeasement of God's anger, as though God had to punish someone; Jesus took our place, and so we're ok because he punished Jesus instead. What sort of forgiveness is that? It's not forgiveness at all. It's what A.I. Watcher calls a "blood cult". But it's not the Christianity that I see in the Bible. When the Bible talks about the cross, it doesn't talk of it as the way God was appeased, or the way God was reconciled to us. Instead it talks of it as the way we were reconciled to God. That's the way round it is. The problem that Christianity solves isn't God's hostility towards us; it's our hostility towards God! God is already ready to accept everyone. We just need to realise it. And the cross works by making us realise it! It's when we see Jesus on the cross that we realise that's how far he was willing to go to show us a God who takes into himself the hurt we have caused him, instead of throwing it back at us. The cross wasn't necessary to change God's mind about us; it was necessary to change our mind about him, to realise that he is ready to accept us. Christians who hold to the "appeasement" idea I have rejected above (often called "substitutionary atonement") might ask at this point, "But if that's all there is to the cross, why did Jesus have to endure such a horrible death? Surely if it only happened to make us change our mind about God, it didn't need to be so terrible?" Well, no it didn't need to be so terrible. Jesus didn't "need to die" like that. He didn't "need to die" at all, in the sense some Christians mean. The whole point is that even though he didn't need to die, he willing allowed himself to be killed. Jesus was willing to endure the worst that people could throw at him. Jesus didn't need to die, but the plain historical fact is that he was killed. It didn't need to be such a horrible death, but the plain historical fact is that it was, due to the evil invention of Roman crucifixion. And that's enough to prove that Jesus, on God's behalf, was willing to endure the worst, whatever that worst turned out to be. And he did it because he knew it was the only way of showing humankind how willing God is to forgive. I fully understand why people like A.I. Watcher reject the form of Christianity they were taught, and reject the sort of God it portrays. I would as well. But I wonder whether they would react quite so much against this, which I think is a more authentic version of Christianity? It's a Christianity that teaches the worth and value of all human beings, and the need to love and accept all people unconditionally. With Christian love, Jules |
Follow ups: