Question about Jesus sacrificing himself for our sins

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Yep.

How very Bertrand Russell of you

I tend to agree with your sentiment, I like Russell's that if an opinion brings you to anger then you should try and explore the prejudice that caused the anger.

I often thought this, his companions and followers couldn't believe their saviour (in the mortal sense) was gone, dead, killed. They expected to be freed of oppression and then all ended so brutally. Total denial set in and a new story emerged of how it was all God's plan, it wasn't really disaster, it was to save us all from God's wrath at our sins, we were so bad He could only forgive us if His son was tortured and killed first (never understood that bit either), the apostles hadn't really given up their families and livelihoods for nothing.

Similar events have happened more recently, one American sect had members who had given away all their possessions, left their jobs and waited for the spaceship which was coming for them while the rest of mankind was to be destroyed for its wicked ways (sound familiar?). Spaceship didn't come. Rather than admit they were wrong, they believed a new theory that mankind was forgiven because the sect's devotion in sacrificing all possessions and waiting all night, showed such faith that the world was saved as a result of their actions. They became even more devoted to their cause of converting others.


Hmm,

The concept of someone else atoning for your sins is ludicrous. If you want to atone for your wrongdoings, make reparations to the people you hurt. If nobody was hurt, you didn't do anything wrong. Don't use an imaginary deity as justification to ignore interpersonal responsibility.

Christianity is a control mechanism. You are given a creative way to avoid personal responsibility in exchange for following arbitrary rules.

adb, I do know Christians who do lead very thoughtful lives, the real ones.

There are plenty of others who are just like you say, feel absolved when they have made no reparation to the injured party and feel superior because they follow the rules and are so much more upstanding than those not in their church.

I can't really understand the claim that some Christians are more "real" than others.

Christianity, by definition, is about admitting that you are incapable of making reparations appropriate to your "sins": you need to be "saved" by believing that Jesus paid for your sins. Anyone who believes that is a "real Christian". And in my opinion, anyone who believes that is making the decision (consciously or not) to avoid personal responsibility.

But its been such a long time, nearly 2000 years. He died to absolve his followers sins so they would be saved when the world ended. It didn't happen, so people still opt for burial rather than cremation so their bodies can be resurrected. After this length of time they might as well have been cremated for all that is left of the bodies.

The world wasn't supposed to be still ticking along nicely, some would even say that certain fundamentalist politicians have tried to kick start the predicted apocalypse to begin in the middle east. They are fully aware of the contradiction, but can't admit it.

Isn't it time to admit that maybe something didn't go to plan? Someone somewhere made a mistake in the story?

Two things, firstly, a scripture says "this good news of the Kingdom will be preached in the entire inhabited world, and then the end will come", there are probably still a lot of places the good news hasnt reached yet.

More importantly, God wont bring his Kingdom and kill off all the unbelievers until he has no other choice, a scripture in Revelation says he will "bring to ruin those ruining the Earth", a notion that was untenable when Revelation was written, but we now seem to be getting close to doing such, another scripture says, "unless those days were cut short, no flesh would be saved", when the creation has completely proved Satan's misleading claims to be wrong to the extent creation is about to expire, then Jesus will return, or at least when Satan's global government threatens to end worship of God :-

Revelation 12 17 And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.[b]