Jesus Did Not Die For Your Sins
Jesus Did Not Die For Your Sins
By August Berkshire
(This essay is available as a downloadable tri-pane PDF pamphlet
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
– John 3:16 (NIV)
According to Christians, all humans are “sinners” who need to be forgiven. Christians further believe that the Biblical character of Jesus is a savior who died for our sins. Those who are not “saved” by Jesus are presumably destined for eternal suffering in Hell.
This raises the following questions: What are these sins? Who are these sins committed against? Who should do the forgiving? Who should suffer the punishment? And, in what way does Jesus save us?
Sinful Human Nature
The first category of sin would be what Christians claim is the inherent sinful nature of humans. The sin we are born with – called “original sin” – requires baptism to “wash away our sin.” Yet even after this, our sinful nature continues, and so we are supposedly in need of a savior.
But if the god who supposedly created us was dissatisfied with his creation, he should have started over and kept trying until he got it the way he wanted. (In fact, why didn’t he get it right in the first place?) For this god not to do this shows that he is either incompetent or cruel (creating beings, some of which he knows are destined for eternal punishment in Hell).
Humans Sinning Against Humans
The second category of sin would be the willful harm humans do to each other. But such harm can only properly be forgiven by the person who has been injured, not by a third-party savior (or a priest acting on behalf of that savior).
And if a punishment is appropriate, it is unjust for anyone but the person committing the harm to suffer the penalty. It is unethical for a third-party savior to suffer for the sins of others, just as it would be unethical for any of us to go to prison for crimes committed by someone else.
Thus no divine third-party savior is needed for forgiveness or to suffer a penalty.
While a god might be disappointed in our behavior towards each other, this god is not harmed by it, nor should this god send a savior to suffer for it.
Humans Sinning Against A God
A third category of sin, according to Christians, are sins that humans commit against the Biblical god.
No one claims that the Christian god Yahweh has ever been physically injured by humans. And the only physical harm alleged against the Christian god Jesus was during the story of his crucifixion, and the people who supposedly committed that act are long dead.
Thus the only way we might be able to harm a Christian god today would be by causing this god mental anguish.
(However, it should be noted that it is not possible for an all-powerful god to experience mental anguish unless he himself allows it.)
If this god’s mental anguish is caused by humans harming each other, then, as stated previously, the only being who can properly bestow forgiveness is the human who has been harmed. While a god might be disappointed in our behavior towards each other, this god not harmed by it.
However, if this god’s mental anguish is caused by humans failing to believe in this god’s existence, then that is easily remedied by this all-powerful god revealing himself in a convincing way. If this god fails to do this, then he has no one but himself to blame for any mental anguish caused by people not believing in his existence. To blame humans is to blame the victim, which is unethical.
If this god’s mental anguish is caused by humans failing to have proper gratitude for his goodness, then this god must first demonstrate that there is something good in life that would not be possible without him. And, the proper punishment for not appreciating something good is the removal of that thing, not eternal torture.
Furthermore, this god must also explain the existence of natural evil – why he, as an all-powerful, all-loving god, allows it to happen. And, if he can’t explain the problem of evil, then this god should ask us for forgiveness.
Finally, it should be mentioned that thought-crime should not be a sin because it harms no one and we cannot help what thoughts come into our head, nor are we always successful at banishing them.
Does Jesus Save Us?
In order to be “saved” you have to be “saved” from something. You have to be in danger of something bad happening to you.
According to Christians, what happens if our sins are not forgiven by the Biblical god? What happens if Jesus does not “save” us? The answer is that we go to Hell forever.
Who makes the determination of whether or not we go to Hell? It is obviously the Christian god, since no human in his or her right mind would send himself or herself to Hell. (We don’t even know the directions to get there, wherever it is.)
In the Bible, sacrifices are made to a god to try to please him. For example, “Then burn the entire ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the LORD, a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the LORD.” (Exodus 29:18, NIV)
If Jesus’ death was a “sacrifice,” it was a sacrifice to God. In fact, Jesus is sometimes referred to as the “lamb of God”: “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ ” (John 1:29, NIV)
It is claimed that Christianity is a monotheistic religion, so there must be at least some sense in which Yahweh in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament are the same god.
Putting all of the above elements together, we can reach the following conclusion: God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself.
Jesus’ “Sacrifice”
While it might make sense for a god to punish humans for harm they cause each other – if no human authority is able to do it – it makes no sense for a god to punish an innocent third-party savior for the misdeeds of humans.
Thus the sacrifice of Jesus makes no sense. It violates justice to have an innocent person pay a penalty for a guilty person. And if an all-powerful god doesn’t want to send us to Hell, he can presumably stop himself from sending us there.
If the Biblical god wanted to forgive us for something, he could simply have done it. No savior needed to die in order to accomplish this. If one chooses a more difficult way than is necessary in order to accomplish a task, then, by definition, it is not a sacrifice.
For Jesus to have suffered and died for humanity, when it wasn’t necessary, makes Yahweh a sadist and Jesus either a masochist or an innocent victim. So Jesus deserves either our scorn or our pity, but not our gratitude.
But while Jesus’ suffering makes no logical sense, it does make emotional sense in that it is often used as an emotional ploy to keep Christians guilt-tripped into remaining believers: “Jesus suffered and died for you. How can you abandon him?”
But Jesus did not die for your sins. He died for himself.
© 2011-2012 August Berkshire (01.18.2012)
Comments
7 Comments on Jesus Did Not Die For Your Sins
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George Richter on
Sat, 2nd Apr 2011 9:46 pm
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Dave Bentley on
Thu, 7th Apr 2011 5:29 pm
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Admin User August Berkshire on
Thu, 7th Apr 2011 9:22 pm
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Zack on
Fri, 8th Apr 2011 8:00 am
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Admin User August Berkshire on
Fri, 8th Apr 2011 10:33 am
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How sad for you on
Mon, 23rd May 2011 1:26 am
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Admin User August Berkshire on
Mon, 23rd May 2011 6:02 am
Atheists are so commendable, urging people to stop the nonsense and accept only that which is understandable by the rules of simple observation and science. Most are totally unaware of their simple act of faith: ‘Only this material world exists!’
Way back in 1883 Edwin Abbott wrote ‘Flatland’ to show how contiguous dimensional worlds leave inhabitants of lower worlds totally unable to even imagine any higher world exists. In their Creed Christians acclaim God as ‘Creator of all things, seen and unseen’.
Recently, the book ‘Techie Worlds’ utilizies the unidentified extra dimensions of Superstring Theory to examine the teachings of Jesus and His Church.. We all agree, after a soldier is blown to bits by high explosives we cannot physically explain the ‘resurrection of his body’. But ‘Techie Worlds’ presents a logical and mechanistic way he can get his body back in a higher world. ‘Trinity’ is ridiculous in our world, but ‘Techie Worlds’ explains it in a simple way. ‘Soul’ has a similar problem; it teaches that men are like the Deity. Many other ‘ridiculous’ concepts are explained, including creation, the Kingship of Jesus, war in Heaven, the logic of redemption, etc, avoiding the language of the pulpit in favor of the talk of engineers and auto mechanics.
‘Techie Worlds’ (available from Amazon) is a direct challenge to atheists, making them aware of their act of faith. It’s ideas are not provable, but show that this guy who lived 2,000 years ago held notions that can only be true if such ‘higher’ worlds exist. How did He know?
So ‘thinking’ people have two reasonable acts of faith to choose from. The ‘only this world’ view is greatly lacking,especially for this life on Earth.
George Richter
eng2gbr@aol.com
On the topic of Jesus sacrificing and dying for our sins – Jesus was crucified, resurrected 3 days later, and ascended to heaven – He gave up his whole weekend for us!
Prometheus, chained to a rock, sacrifices his regenerating liver to eagles every day for giving humans the gift of fire. Jesus has a few bad hours for giving us the gift of guilt. Personally, I appreciate Prometheus more.
To George:
In daily life, most people live by simple observation and data gathering. When driving to work, you think about the route, the time it takes, road construction, etc. No one would be ridiculed or called “commendable” sarcastically for not taking the supernatural into consideration!
Your argument boils down to this; Jesus miraculously healed people of blindness; 2000 years later modern medicine can sometimes heal people of blindness; therefore atheists have a direct challenge because a religious person supposedly did something, or thought of something that may well turn out to be scientific. “How did he know?”
This is no challenge at all. If something is true, it doesn’t matter who says it as long as it’s provable. If it’s provable, then it’s natural, not super natural. Just because someone has an “idea” does not mean they “know.” If you perceive reality by what is natural, real, and provable, like most atheists do, than no idea is a direct challenge to anything you believe. If something you didn’t believe before, becomes scientific consensus, no problem. You can believe it now with good reason. You’re already on an atheist site, I would suggest that you listen to atheist podcasts and find out how we really think.
Reasonable Doubts would be a great start.
Your next point seems to be that there is something other than what we can perceive. I don’t understand the need to make this distinction. You either perceive something to be real or you don’t. Of course we don’t understand all there is to know, but that doesn’t give us cause to believe any old fantasy that makes us feel good or justifies an ancient religion that we happen to believe in already.
Finally, the small mind argument; let’s say there were some ancient writings that talked about super advanced chemistry and quantum physics that were clearly written down, spelled out, backed up with experimentation and observation that would enable us somehow to travel to a “different realm.” It was written by some kind of super genius and even in modern times we were only able to follow it to a certain point before it completely exhausted our intelligence and filled up all of our computer storage facilities. Then you might have a point.
Instead we get Yahweh commanding Hebrews to slaughter every man, woman and child on the one hand, and Christians saying that this god is love on the other. When the contradiction is pointed out, they say that man can’t understand it with their puny little minds! No, it’s far more simple than that; humans have an extremely rich story-telling, mythological, cultural historical psychology that gives people answers (real or imaginary), narratives, comfort, direction, and community, regardless of the actual realities. Disjointed ideas get crammed together all the time into religious dogma, because logic doesn’t always matter.
As we discover the actual keys to reality and the way the real world functions, often times it comes into direct conflict with old cherished beliefs. As a result religious people often throw up the concept of multiple worlds, the limited human mind, and magical thinking that is not falsifiable and therefore safe from science. Then they usually reinterpret their ancient material to fit with modern science, turn around and say, Ha!, we beat you to it. But why are they appealing to science to justify their religious beliefs in the first place? Think about it; there are no chemistry equations, experiments and proofs in these ancient writings that we foolish modern scientific people have just ignored. If there were, we’d have used them by now!
Why were you writing these points as a comment to a post that clearly shows some of the self-inconsistencies and contradictions of Christian dogma? We’re not urging people to do anything but think. The reason why these contradictions can just sit there in plain sight without being challenged is because people want to believe certain things, regardless of whether they are true or not, and so it builds into a dogma. And this can become dangerous because people might act from an invented reality instead of from logic, reason, and understanding. That’s how you get toddlers being tortured as witches in Nigeria, homosexuals executed in Uganda, people urged not to use condoms in HIV ravaged Africa, and religious persecutions, wars, and atrocities.
I don’t own the book Techie Worlds and there are no reviews on Amazon for the latest edition of the book, despite the fact that it was published a year ago. An earlier edition of the book, published three years ago, has only two reviews (a one-star review and a five-star review). For such a groundbreaking book, it has made remarkably little impact.
The reviewer who gave the book a five-star review doesn’t even know how to spell the name of the city he lives in. A comment on that review by Calladus is devastating.
Below is the one-star review:
Should really get no stars for such an epic failure
“Flatland is a satire written by Edwin Abbot about the social dynamic of Victorian culture, using the metaphor of other dimensional worlds and the kinds of beings that might live there. However, the novella in no way claims that these dimensions actually exist in any meaningful way, or proves that we can have knowledge of them. It is a work of fiction. To take this work of fiction, and expand upon it by adding the countless other fictions included in Christianity, and then claim that this combination somehow yields knowledge about they way our world works, is a truly epic failure.”
So if you want to send me a free copy of the book I’ll take a look at it. Otherwise, I won’t waste my time.
Obviously, since you are quoting bible scripture, I take it you have read it. And on that note you surely must also have read Hebrews 9:27, let me paste it AND AS IT IS APPOINTED FOR MEN TO DIE ONCE, BUT AFTER THIS THE JUDGMENT. Tell me have you found a way to avoid death, have you found a way of stopping yourself from aging and from being sick? If not, then you are heading exactly where this verse is telling you. Are you ready to meet your maker, I certainly would not want to meet him if I left such a comment like you did to deceive the world; you are going to be accountable for an awful lot of accusation. Ponder on that for awhile!
How sad that your religion has terrified you into belief. But that is understandably their last remaining, desperate strategy when they lack evidence. Within a few months I hope to have a new pamphlet dismantling Pascal’s Wager. Stay tuned!