The Futility of the Sacrifice - Christ's Meaningless Death and the Flawed Theology Surrounding It

This is the time of the year when Christians around the world celebrate the birth of their savior, but a recent email conversation, led to the imagery of the cross and his death, a moment that is the true essence of Christian theology. His death was to be the final blood sacrifice to the blood-obsessed, Old Testament god YHWH; a sacrifice to end all sacrifices. Jesus, the son of YHWH, who was really YHWH in human form, would bring everyone ultimate salvation through his death.

Restated from an outsider's perspective, God sacrificed himself to himself to exploit a loophole in a rule he himself made.

It has been said that Jesus had a bad weekend for our sins, and I have to agree. For humans, death is final. Even those who believe in an afterlife view death with a sense of finality. For Jesus, not only was death not final, he was up walking within a day and a half (he died sometime after midday Friday and was resurrected before sunup on Sunday, which equates to around 36 hours, give or take). Not much of a sacrifice. I know people who have been painfully bedridden for longer than that after minor surgery, and they didn't have an eternity to live. In the grand scheme of things, death for Jesus was less a sacrifice than stubbing a toe would be for you or me. What sacrifice is death when you can't really die? How does his death serve even a symbolic function when his suffering was so fleeting and insignificant?

Regardless of the value of the sacrifice, the whole story itself belies a deeper problem with Christian theology. For the story to be true, God could not possibly be both benevolent and all-powerful. If he was all-powerful, requiring blood sacrifices of any sort and allowing the crucifixion to carry forth shows a malevolent intent. Conceding that the sacrifice shows a benevolence and caring for his creation, one must assume that he didn't know the sacrifice would be necessary, and didn't have the power to change the rules that were in place. If the rules require a sacrifice, and you are the all-powerful being that wishes to remove that requirement, then why not just use your power to remove the requirement? Why the theatrics? Why the unnecessary suffering? If an all-powerful god had wanted the rules to be changed so that all someone had to do was repent, he could have done it. Instead, we get the story in the Bible, where God has to exploit a previously unknown loophole to achieve the change (a deus ex machina), showing that the god of the Bible is not so all-powerful after all.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all of the problems I have with Christian theology, and it doesn't even begin to broach the spiritual objections. It is merely a list of the most apparent problems I see with the core tenets of the crucifixion and resurrection, which I consider to be the most important theology of the religion. Though it may seem so, I don't necessarily mean to pick on Christianity specifically, but it is the religion I know the best and it is the religion who's believers threaten my liberties on a daily basis, so it gets the focus of my attention. I don't think Islam, Hindu, or any other religion stacks up any better.

Tag. I'm it.

I've been tagged by Ms. SuperScience with the nostalgia meme. I'm supposed to link to five previous posts in different categories.

As for the tagging, I don't have that many people in mind. I'm going to tag:
Ryan at 95% of You Are Morons - Perhaps this will encourage him back into posting more again
Possummomma
Summer Squirrel
CodeMonkey at The Adventures of CodeMonkey - A real life friend of mine, mainly because I want to see if he'll actually do it.

If anyone else wants to participate, don't let my lack of specific recognition stop you.

So, on with the meme.

Link 1 is a little bit of FAMILY: I don't really talk about family all that much here. I've made the point a couple of times in the past that my parents are very religious, especially my mom. I actually get along with them very well as long as religious talk stays out of the picture, but here is a post I made after my mom sent me an especially heinous piece of Biblical literalist propaganda: An answer in search of a question.

Link 2 is a little bit of FRIEND: While not a personal friend, this man was a friend of all skeptics and continues to be missed: Perry DeAngelis: Aug 22, 1963 - Aug 19, 2007

Link 3 is a little bit of YOURSELF: This one is easy: My personal deconversion story

Link 4 should be YOUR LOVE: Being single, I have no "love in my life" in the traditional sense, and I really don't post much about my hobbies or pastimes here, this being more a place to vent than anything else, so I'll just go with a post that I "loved" writing: Jesus returns, takes up residence on cell phone tower

Link 5 can be ANYTHING YOU LIKE: This is a post that still makes me shudder when I read it: The creepiness of religious indoctrination