Hi guys, been a while since I posted so I thought I'd just
do a quick one today.
I want to start by asking; Did Jesus commit suicide?
First a few definitions:
Suicide: Death caused by self-directed
injurious behavior with any intent to die as a result of the behavior.
Or:
Suicide is the willful and voluntary act of a person who
understands the physical nature of the act, and intends by it to accomplish the
result of self-destruction.
That being said, let's talk a bit about Jesus.
Jesus, who “gave up his divine privileges; he took the
humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in
human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death
on a cross"
I propose that this was a suicide.
He wanted to die and took measures to ensure that this came
about. He must have wanted to die because otherwise,
what was the point of it all? Wasn't his death the whole..thing? So from the
day he was born he had a plan to ENSURE that he got killed. Seems like suicide
to me. Elegant suicide but still suicide.
To put it another way, say I walked down a street in Saudi Arabia, draped in pork and carrying signs with drawings of Mohammed as he engages in deviant sexual acts. Assuming that getting killed was my intention from the start and suprise! I get killed as a result of those actions, would that count as suicide? Yes it would. It may be indirect but it is definately suicide.
Furthermore I challenge the idea of a his death being a
"noble sacrifice".
He had humbled himself to become Human, a state of being so
abysmal compared to being God of the universe that there is simply no
comparison. That is considered a noble sacrifice and I concur. But then he
brought about his own death and at the end of the day He got to return to His
former Glory. Where is the sacrifice in that?
He is back as supreme being of the universe and all is well
right? Death is a sacrifice because its so final. You give up your life on
earth forever. For one human to do that for another is truly the greatest act
of love there is. But for an immortal God to do it? Seems to be simple pageantry.
What really changed for Him? Beyond a short and no doubt amusing episode as a
human...nothing really. Where is the sacrifice? Yes, you can say he didn't HAVE
to come here, He didn't Have to die, He did that for our sake.
But I ask, what benefit is there to us? Jesus essentially
came to earth and sacrificed Himself to Himself in order to wipe away sins that
He essentially created. He condemned us to original sin, and created the
criteria for what's Evil/Good (knowing full well that many of us could not
adhere to those rules) and then (apparently) devised the most hideous
punishment imaginable for these sins.
He could easily have wiped the slate clean in heaven and it
would have had the exact same effect. How did the theatrics of dying on the
cross change our lives as humans? Not one bit.
Does Jesus' death change our moral obligation as humans? No,
A sin before He came is the same as a sin after He came. The criterion for
being righteous never changed.
What of forgiveness? Every human sins. After Jesus, we're
told that all we need to do is to repent of our sins and they will be forgiven.
How about before Jesus? The 'good' people of that time also sinned right? So a
good person must have been remorseful and repentant also. You could not carry a
secret joy over committing sins and expect to enter heaven. So repentance was
also a requirement before the death of Jesus.
So this whole "died for our sins" business, what
does it mean to us really? I can't see that it means anything. It's a bit of
heavenly accounting. Life for us would go on as before whether it happened or
not.
If anything it demonstrates a cruelty in God that I cannot
reconcile. Before Jesus would He would just throw the truly evil and the repentant
into Hell without caring? And only stop to evaluate whether you regretted your
sins first after Jesus came? Either way, the
decision had nothing to do with our moral obligations as mortals.
A sin is a sin is a sin, whether ten thousand years ago or
today. Your attitude towards sin should be the same whether ten thousand years
ago or today and if you commit a sin and do not repent its Hell fire for you,
Jesus or no Jesus.
(I should probably state at this point that it is my firm belief
that you can be a "good" person even if you've never heard of Jesus)
So God came to earth and committed very elaborate suicide
for what? It told us nothing new and didn't change what we needed to do to get
into heaven.
And suicide is a sin right? so.......?
