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A Sacrifice?

It is my belief that one of the greatest fallacies of Christendom is the tenet that Jesus died for our sins. If you think about it even only a little and you have to come away wondering how that could be?

Years ago as a bachelor father, I wondered, "How God could do that?"

That was just one of the issues that drove me away, not from God or Christ, but away from the church. Here was my reasoning…

I knew in my heart that I was a far from perfect person; I wasn’t even a very good father. I loved my kids, but I was strict to the max.  Make no mistake, I would have given my life so that they could live, but I was harsh. I didn’t mean to be, but it was the way I was raised and I mimicked my dad. However, as bad as I was, I knew this; I would never punish one of my children for something someone else had done. Only the guilty child would be punished.

This is exactly what the sacrificial theory is based on—Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden. From that time everyone is supposed to have been born in what came to be known as "Original Sin."

This is how that came about. Based on the Biblical accounts, Eve committed the very first sin when enticed by Satan in the form of a serpent, to eat the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil that stood in the very center of the Garden of Eden. She tasted it, liked it and knew it was good. Later, when Adam came looking for her, she offered him a bite and he, too, ate of it.

     The problem was that God had forbidden them to eat of it by telling that they would die when they did. Now that part is true, for when they ate of this metaphorical fruit, they died to ignorance, becoming what we are today, sentient human beings knowing right from wrong; we became beings able to think in the abstract and make logical conclusions; we became beings with imaginations.

In other words, we became the superior intelligence native to this world.

The Bible then tells that they were then driven out of their idyllic existence in the Garden and into a world of harsh living conditions; into a world of right and wrong. And because of their transgressions, all their descendants would bear the blame (sin) of Adam and Eve's disobedience, which eventually became known as “Original Sin.” This means that every child born fresh from the womb was already guilty of sin before they even had a chance to prove otherwise.

In brief, that's what original sin is based on.  But why?

In Jesus day (and way before) people made regular sacrifices to appease the gods.  Jews, however, only made sacrifices to one: Yahweh.  Based on this knowledge, this is my theory—and it makes logical sense: The people who knew Jesus best, truly loved Him and were constantly amazed by Him. They knew that He was not simply an ordinary man, but a Son of God. If their theories were correct—and I believe they were—in their minds there was no logical reason He should die—unless it was because He was the ultimate sacrifice...the sacrifice that finally absolved and eliminated the sin of Adam and Eve.  Remember, ancient Judaism—the faith of early Christians—was a belief which sacrificed animals in order to appease God...something they no longer do.

To them it only made sense that, because God so loved humanity He was willing to use His Son as a sacrificial offering. Eventually this theory evolved into a tenet that all children were born with original sin and that only those who believed and accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour could be saved. This was done through the rite of Baptism, which washed away original sin. 

Alternately, those who were not baptized into the “true” religion were doomed to go to hell when they died.

Which brings up two more questions: (1) Is there a hell, and (2) Does baptism do anything.