(September 21, 2012 at 9:04 pm)Creed of Heresy Wrote: The only thing I can reply to at the moment [gotta run, but I'll reply in full a bit later], the one that nagged at me the most, was the surrender of his mortal life and not his divine one.
If Jesus had surrendered his divinity...I would find it far more relatable on both a scale of self-sacrifice [for what is a mortal life compared to divinity?] and of balance of payment [surrendering another 50 years of mortality in exchange for thousands of years both past and future of sins is like buying the Mona Lisa for $5]. The sacrifice is far from impressive to me, the other implications revolving around the guilt-trip and robbing of free-will notwithstanding, due to its utter lack of relatability. If Jesus had simply died and that was that, the nobility of his sacrifice would be far more worthy to me. But he died and then came back and ascended. Well, doesn't seem like he gave much up, did he? It's an attempt to guilt-trip me but it fails because it removes the reason to feel guilty in an attempt to make the story more awe-inspiring, see?
I'll answer the rest later when I get back, hopefully.
I'll be honest, I've never thought of it this way, but you make a valid point. What is one mortal (though not really mortal) life compared to the infinite, omnipresent life of God. Though to be honest, it would be physically impossible for a God to "sacrifice" anything anyway, as sacrifice is literally an offering to God. How can one offer something to oneself? Even stranger still, how can God offer himself to himself in order to create a loophole in the stringent "entry requirements" of heaven that he, himself, created the first place. The whole situation is rather peculiar.
