"Imperfect animals?" I'm a little grossed out by your beliefs. I am not going to lie. I am starting to think Christianity is a belief structure that is irredeemable in the majority of people. A scant few of you admit that the Bible is probably wrong due to translation and time. The rest of you will jump through hoops trying to justify what is absolutely ridiculous. Imperfect animals? Ha! Nothing is perfect, but the way you said that just reeks of a superiority complex. Since you can't find an excuse to be superior in reality, you turn to the bible. I think I need a break from talking about Christianity. Nothing makes me more anxious or depressed and yet I pursue these idiotic quests for understanding only to find that I am never going to get a single straight answer from a Christian -- even the ones I love or like.

(January 5, 2012 at 2:15 pm)Shell B Wrote: Still doesn't make sense, Frodo. What about the animals? They were just "killed" by humans. So was Jesus.

I eat animals most days. that isn't anything to do with sacrufice. Neither was the killing of Jesus to any of the humans present. Sacrifices of any kind are a payment.... you offer the payment so that you might get let off the debt. If no one is doing any offerring then 'sacrifice' doesn't factor.

(January 5, 2012 at 2:15 pm)Shell B Wrote: If god made the sacrifice to cleanse people of sin (or whatever) how is that a sacrifice? In fact, it is not really a sacrifice at all, given that the rest of him just went back to heaven. Without the human sacrifice aspect of it, it's a shitty story with more plot holes than Twilight.

You seem now to be diversifying into ridicule. But just in case you're serious, I'll try to help again.

God made the sacrifice because only he could. Only he can make such a far reaching gesture that fully covers every eventuality. The perfect insurance policy. That's how you get to claim the ultimate pay back.

The triune God didn't sacrifice the triune God, he sacrificed an aspect of himself designed specifically for this purpose. Jesus doesn't carry on minus the storyline. It's inherant to his character that only needed to play out that story once and be done with it.

Quote:It doesn't matter if you think he was "perfect." He was still a man.

You hit one of the many paradoxes in Christianity :

Jesus is seen as God AND man. However---

If he was perfect and could not sin,then he was not a man. ALL men are sinners according to Christianity. To claim Jesus was the exception is special pleading.

If he sinned, he was not God,as God is perfect by definition.

All beliefs are choices. They are exercises in free will. Any disbelief that something which you percieve in your conscious/mind/soul (physical reality, truth, emotion, morality, value, right/wrong, unicorns, everything) is a negation of the validity of your own consciousness. A negation of consciousness is a negation of existence. A negation of existence is a negation of God.

If you can't believe in Jesus Christ, who is God manifested in human form you negate your own consciousness and hence your own existence hence you negate God.

since it is impossible to believe in God correctly because God is incomprehensible(this also makes God extremely hard not to believe in in my opinion, sorry atheists I still think you believe in some iteration of God even though you don't call your belief "God") God manifested and sacrificed Gods-self in the form of Jesus so that humanity may believe in life-everlasting (although any interpretation of what existence beyond this life is like is speculation, my theory is a state of perfect love coupled with the infinity of consciousness)

God isn't casting the wicked and the disbelievers into darkness away from God, we're doing it to ourselves. Those of us who refuse to believe in Jesus Christ refuse to believe in our own eternal existence and therefore negate God and cast ourselves away. The truly wicked among us refuse redemption and salvation refuse to submit to God's ultimate authority and again cast themselves away from God to hell.

Allah is just form of belief in God. That belief is not distinguishable from the Christian God or from a belief in science or ultimately atheism (if that atheist believes in a "reality".) All those beliefs are necessarily woefully incomplete. God exists apart from our ideas about what God is or isn't.

The distinction is Jesus Christ. The belief in Jesus Christ is a belief in the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. It is a belief in reality, in truth and love, in righteousness. It is a belief in God.

Anyone can turn to Jesus Christ; in this life or after death. That is the epitome of free will.

All it takes is a little faith.

"God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand, you have failed."- St. Agustine

So I guess to answer the question: I believe God sacrificed Gods-self in the form of Jesus Christ so that we (all people, not just Christians) may have eternal life and forgiveness of sins...

Cultic practices ( yes, G-C, your jesus shit is just one more cult ) do not seem to have translated well from ancient to modern ways of thinking. On Page 84 of "The View From Nebo" an archaeological review by Amy Dockser Marcus comes this observation:

Quote: The most important form of worship in ancient times was sacrifice, the offering of animals to the gods. Praying ran a distant second. People would travel great distances to offer sacrifices at the main cultic centers, usually located in large city-states like Hazor and Megiddo. So many sacrifices were being conducted at those cities that the temples and cultic institutions became veritable butcher shops, slaughtering, cutting and distributing the sundry parts of the animal throughout the city. The distribution was often carried out along class lines. The priests got the best cuts as well as the skins. The rich especially prized sheep tails ( for their high fat content), animal heads, and the most tender cuts of meat from young animals. The poor got what was left.

Guess we know where today's corporate scumbags got their ideas from.

By the way, the book is well worth reading.

Shell: God didn't sacrifice "himself" to himself. His sacrifice himself to us.

Quote:I eat animals most days. that isn't anything to do with sacrufice. Neither was the killing of Jesus to any of the humans present. Sacrifices of any kind are a payment.... you offer the payment so that you might get let off the debt. If no one is doing any offerring then 'sacrifice' doesn't factor.

Um, wasn't Jesus doing the offering? How was killing an animal, cooking it and then eating it offering payment to anything other than your belly?

Quote:You seem now to be diversifying into ridicule. But just in case you're serious, I'll try to help again.

I'm not. I am telling you precisely how I see all of this.

Quote:God made the sacrifice because only he could. Only he can make such a far reaching gesture that fully covers every eventuality. The perfect insurance policy. That's how you get to claim the ultimate pay back.

That really has nothing to do with it, though. This is very simple and it is being convoluted. Jesus was a man. He was sacrificed for our sins. Correct? That is all we are trying to establish.

Quote:The triune God didn't sacrifice the triune God, he sacrificed an aspect of himself designed specifically for this purpose. Jesus doesn't carry on minus the storyline. It's inherant to his character that only needed to play out that story once and be done with it.

Still has absolutely nothing with what I am trying to establish here. That is where I am having a problem. I'm honestly starting to feel like some Christians are incapable of giving an answer to a direct question. Instead, we always delve into the nature of god. I'm not asking about any god's nature or how lowly gc thinks animals are. I am trying to establish if Jesus was a man and a sacrifice. It could not be simpler.

---

(January 5, 2012 at 7:15 pm)amkerman Wrote: Shell: God didn't sacrifice "himself" to himself. His sacrifice himself to us.

Ugh. I didn't say that.

Even if he sacrificed a part of himself for us, which is kind of stupid because he could have just cleansed sin without doing all of that, he still okayed a human sacrifice. Still, Jesus never said he was god, if I remember correctly. He is referred to in the Bible as the son of god. Christians rationalized the rest of the god nonsense.

"For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus"

Timothy 2:5

We have made no sacrifices to God. We have nothing to offer. We can only attempt to do what is right. Usually we fail.

By believing god, you fail all the time.

(January 5, 2012 at 7:26 pm)amkerman Wrote: We have made no sacrifices to God. We have nothing to offer. We can only attempt to do what is right. Usually we fail.

I'm pretty sure "we" have supposedly made thousands (at least) sacrifices to god. In fact, it used to be a law of your faith.