I believe its to show how genuinely he loves us and cares for us. Tell me this, if you were the CEO of a company. Two other companies want to you to enter merger deals with them. Who would you be more inclined sell your corporation to, the company that sends a rep, or the company whose CEO personally visits you? A rough analogy, but the best I could think of

Perhaps it was partly symbolic? We, as mortals, can only perceive and relate to things on a level that we have some connection to. Simply waiving the debt and telling us would not have gotten the same reaction that giving us a PHYSICAL manifestation and PHYSICALLY suffering for our sins would have.

Because, prior to Christ, God told His people that blood was necessary to redeem them from sins. So God instituted this thing where they had to sacrifice a perfect lamb, or a goat or whatever depending on the nature of the particular sacrifice. But (via the book of Hebrews) God also said that your animal sacrifice was not perfect....thus they had to do it repeatedly, because it was imperfect, and thus could not cover all their sins.

So, in order to once and for all provide a sacrifice that was sufficient and perfect to cover *all* sins, God sent Himself in the form of a perfect Man, the Christ, Jesus, who after living a perfect life would thus provide a perfect sacrifice when He was unjustly murdered on the cross. Becuase He was perfect and eternal, His blood was infinitely better than the blood of lambs, and therefore was sufficient to cover ALL the sins of man for eternity.

Christ's blood was necessary becuase God had already established that blood was the necessary requirement to remove sin from a man's soul.

Now...don't ask why it took a few thousand years of animal sacrifice to get to that point. I don't know. But, that being said, when an animal was sacrificed, the priests ate the damned thing, so at least nothing went to waist.

The sad thing is they didn't save a self-replicating piece of Jesus flesh so that we could all eat Him after the sacrifice. Sigh...

Damn, you beat my by a minute.

I think it was supposed to be a reversal of the usual "humans sacrifice to God when they want something (like to not get smited)" thing. The idea was that God was sacrificing to humans to get us to accept a new covenant.

The Bible explains why Christ had to be sacrificed in the book of Hebrews. There is no need to debate the "why" of it, if the premise of the question is based on some Biblical account of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. Your guess-work is in vain, since the answer is already provided in the same book that the premise of the question is derived from. Go read the book of Hebrews.

and then, somebody find me some self-replicating Jesus flesh. it would help with my grocery bills.

surely, just like in the current financial debt, 'just waiving it' would set a bad precedent...

@Smiley's first post:

XD

That was good...genuined loled at that...

@goldfinger:

I'm sorry, but I don't see the analogy there--

Yes, the CEO is sending someone...but are you really equating a merger with the torture and execution of a person--possibly yourself, if Jesus is supposed to be God/a version of God--on a cross via crucifixtion, which will have said person nailed through the flesh to a board and possibly tied up as well in such a position that bleeding and suffocation from the positioning, not to mention the nakedness and the fact this is the Middle East in the summer, and so it's going to be pretty roasting out as well, all combining to form a very slow and toruturous death?

Just saying...

If God said....eh....I was just kidding. All your sins are forgiven....no need for sacrifice....Would you believe it? Most people don't believe it WITH the seriousness of the sacrifice involved.

If God said, "You better behave of there will be hell to pay..." God says...and then says, "Eh....just kidding...." You wouldn't behave.

So, God made sacrifice a serious part of redemption in order to make people understand that Hell was a serious threat. But, becuase Christ is Himself, and is perfect and eternal, He could safely sacrifice Himself without suffering hell Himself in order to save us all from Hell....er....right???

But I still would dig on some self-replicating Jesus-steak...

@Rommeltastic:

but then again, even if it's symbolic...

God coultn't have picked a better symbol than torturing himself? What's worse, if Christianity's wrong and Jesus WASN'T God, then this would, if we still wnat to keep the God/symbolism idea, mean God doomed some poor schmuck to be born and raised for the express purpose of punishing him for everything everyyone ELSE did wrong, while he led a totally blameless life himself.

How is THAT a just God?

He sounds like a monster in that light...

Good god, Obiwan...do you have me muted? I've made some damned good and amusing arguments here. This fucking mute function is assinine. It fucks up not only the threads, but games as well. Dumbest thing ever, put in place so that people with no emotional control could mute people when they were incapable of reading things they didn't like.

Obiwan......thing is, I can spam your thread. And, somebody tell him I will unless he un-mutes me and repsonds. 'Cause I can spam a thread all night on principle...

@krellin, nice story, does it make you behave? does telling a child make them behave? does that work for all children? do christians have a lot of premarital sex? (cause the pregnancy rate indicates that the do... believing in god increase the likely-hood that they will fall pregnant...)

I would put forward the arguement that people, some people at least, need to an explanation as to why they should behave in a given way, rather than just telling the TO behave....

but then nothing will be enough to please everyone... unless it is flexible enough to include everyone's needs... hmm

@orthaic....areyou really too stupid to grasp that it isn't MY story, but I simply told you what the Bible says....specifically in the book of Hebrews? I wasn't saying I agree with it or not...in fact, I thought the self-replicating Jesus-steak comment might have given my stance away.....

He asked a biblical question, and I gave him the answer as it is found IN the Bible. It has nothing to do with belief, or fairness....it simply is the answer in the book he referenced.

Or are you such a jackass that your can't read what I wrote without attacking me because you hate me? Which proves that, most likely, any time you disgree with me it is not based upon facts, but purely based upon your uncontrolled emotions....

@Obi: "God coultn't have picked a better symbol than torturing himself? What's worse, if Christianity's wrong and Jesus WASN'T God, then this would, if we still wnat to keep the God/symbolism idea, mean God doomed some poor schmuck to be born and raised for the express purpose of punishing him for everything everyyone ELSE did wrong, while he led a totally blameless life himself.

How is THAT a just God?"

what is it with you people... you know were are all children of God, right? i mean, God, the Father, created Adam, or perhaps some sort of system whereby evolution allowed for the random development or humans... but in any case we are part of God and God is our father, God is our mother, God is the source, that is what the word really means.

All that is good is God... all that is...

@Krellin:

Let me take that bit by bit...

"Because, prior to Christ, God told His people that blood was necessary to redeem them from sins."

-Why? Why is blood necessary? Granted this is his world if God made it and I guess eh can make rules up as he goes along, but...why blood?

"So God instituted this thing where they had to sacrifice a perfect lamb, or a goat or whatever depending on the nature of the particular sacrifice. But (via the book of Hebrews) God also said that your animal sacrifice was not perfect....thus they had to do it repeatedly, because it was imperfect, and thus could not cover all their sins."

-So you're basically admitting god is IMPERFECT there, that HIS OWN SUGGESTION, ie, the lamb sacrifice thing, was imperfect, that God suggested a method that--if he's all-knowing--must ahve known was imperfect? Well...how does THAT make sense (unless you're like Smiley and me and just have come to expect this sort of blundering from God by now...but really, this isn't either of us this time, it's your own words, YOU said God was imperfect, that his suggestion was imperfect, the method he gave them was imperfect, never mind the fact that he allowed imperfection and sin to occur in the first place...how does this make him a qualified deity, again?)

"So, in order to once and for all provide a sacrifice that was sufficient and perfect to cover *all* sins, God sent Himself in the form of a perfect Man, the Christ, Jesus, who after living a perfect life would thus provide a perfect sacrifice when He was unjustly murdered on the cross. Becuase He was perfect and eternal, His blood was infinitely better than the blood of lambs, and therefore was sufficient to cover ALL the sins of man for eternity."

-I have three here, actually:

1. So the solution all along was God's absolution, hence the whole blood of God/Jesus thing? Then what was he doing leading them on about the lamb? Why did he do that and allow the pretty-much-senseless slaughter of some of his creations, the lambs...granted man's placed above the lamb in Genesis, sure, but still, if he knew that wouldn't cut it, and only he would, what was he going on about, having them do that?

2. If, then, it's God's absolution/forgiveness/blood we need/needed all along, then, OK, again, why not just say "I forgive you all" if you're going to do the equivalent of that, only just with more blood and potentially harming yourself or, again, worse, harming a prophet and a real man, if Jesus wasn't a god? If God knows all, he must have known people would be clammoring for forgiveness in 2011 and packing churches and going to extreme lengths for religion to feel some sense of worth when they feel they have none, or for absolution for their crimes...how hard is a booming "I forgive you--now just try not to kill or rape anyone for a few centuries, eh?"

3. If our sins are covered for all eternity...then why do pastors go on and on and waste people's time on Sunday when they could be watching football telling folks "Do this or go to Hell," and the like? And why target abortionists and homosexuality as sinful and hell-bound practices if everyone's already forgiven for eternity anyway? And, if it's only Christians who are saved by this sacrifice--which seems unfair, as Jesus was a Jew, but OK--then why the big debate over whether Christians should allow abortions? Or homosexual marriages? Come to think of it, if all Christians are forgiven already and for eternity by this, does that mean if I become a Christian, sincerely, I can do whatever I want, kill whoever I want, steal whatever I want, and I'm forgiven?

"Christ's blood was necessary becuase God had already established that blood was the necessary requirement to remove sin from a man's soul."

-OK, well I guess that answers my blood question, in part, anyway...I still don't see why God had to have it be blood, but alright...

"Now...don't ask why it took a few thousand years of animal sacrifice to get to that point."

Too late.

;)

no krellin, i'm not that stupid, but i thank you for making this personal. I really like it when you make a conversation more emotionally charged and therefore meaningful by throwing in personal insults.

Please continue. I will do my best to respond to all your points, even if everyone else mutes you...

No krellin, I didn't mute you, as you can see.

I just took a while with that post, trying to respond to every part of that as well as I could.

But as you can see--I sure responded. :)

@Obi....dude...I never said the story was logical....I'm just telling you what the book of Hebrews says.

The obvious "Christian" answer is, "God says this is how it is, so deal with it, chump".

As a "Christian" who doubts his faith more and more every day, I am as concerned with this idea as you are. But....if you are looking for a "Biblical" answer to your "Biblical" question....I gave it to you.

Well, I'm glad you agree that story isn't logical...at least...

I'm looking for a logical answer, as usual.

If the Bible can give it, great--though it's my experience that the Bible ususally doesn't give a logical reason, and it hasn't done so far here...

If another book or person can give the logical answer, that works too.

And if the logical answer is that there's no logical answer...

Then someone really ought to rennovate those obsolete buildings with the torture symbol on top of them...

Obi - it's religion. it isn't and can NOT be logical, or it would be science. I can give you a reason why it makes sense, but you won't believe it because you do not want to believe it. That is the nature of faith and belief. You don't believe, and do not want to believe, and therefore I can do noting to convince you.....not am I sure I can convince myself.

I guess I have to wonder why you are so concerned about these questions. You will *never* find an answer that satisfies you, and will most likely only spend your time belittling those that have belief. So why ask the question?

Okay, lets do this from my perspective: God is real, however, I highly doubt that anybody in the Bible was God, or that God ever appeared to anybody. Jesus was just a really good guy (or whoever wrote about him) and decided to make Jewish religion better by making involve caring for other people. If you took the time to read through it, the New Testament is basically the Communist Manifesto. Jesus is the ideal communist, and everyone is supposed to behave like him the best they can. The Bible may or may not be factual, but the general thrust and ideas of what is written carry very important messages about how you should live your life. If everyone followed those things, we'd be in utopia.

Please note that Conservative Christians will vehemently disagree with me. I am not saying they are ideal at all, as they are hypocrites just like the Pharisees of Jesus' time who "refuse to take the log out of their own eye before trying to take the speck out of their neighbor's".

I am currently unaware why people continue to spew "Jesus died for our sins, he loved us". I suspect it is because they have not read or have any knowledge of other, more relevant sections of the Bible.

'it's religion. it isn't and can NOT be logical, or it would be science.'

i disagree, a religion can be logical. Science can be a religion...

however i don't think you need to reject your faith because it is illogical, you can reject the lack of logic, and interpret for yourself what you want to believe about it. That is to say, you can have a logical (self-consistent) belief system, which includes a God, and not need to take up atheism, anti-theism, or agnosticism...

God snapped the universe into existence with age, with stars in place, and light already having traveled vast distances. Logical to a Christian that God created a universe with age....but suggest that to an athiest, and I'm a moron.

No...the logic of a believer is not consistent with the "logic" of an athiest. God implies that somewhere in the argument you will say, "And then God...." did something miraculous that science can not explain. And it is there that logic seeps away. Religion defies logic.

That being said, science defies logic. "There was nothing, except and infinitely small infinitely dense mass...and it exploded...and instead of chaos, it eventually became more and more ordered, until the ultimate of order...life....erupted...and this self-erupting life contained instantly systems by which to consume, to grow, t reproduce....I mean, this life thgat erupted from nothing was ****complex*** beyond belief....and...."

So....yeah....science as most people repeat it as their idiotic school teachers taught them is pretty fucking stupid, too..

logic need only be internally consistent. Christian and Atheist may disagree on the principles which they base their beliefs, but each can agree that from their A priori assumptions the rest of their beliefs follow in a logical and consistent manner.

'and the God...' does not make an arguement illogical, it is merely a cheap and easy way to logically and sensibly explain something away. Like a magic trick, however it requires faith, if you don't accept to begin with that God exists (the A priori bit) then it is not an acceptable trick to use in any arguement...

it's like saying 'a wizard did it' to explain away any inconsistency in a TV show, which is fine if there are wizards in the tv show and they could reasonably have done it... i mean like in season 5 of buffy... and if you know what i'm talking about i don't need to explain, and if you don't explaining will not make a shred of difference...

'There was nothing, except and infinitely small infinitely dense mass...and it exploded...and instead of chaos, it eventually became more and more ordered'

first, science does not say this.

Science says, there was an infinite density object (a singularity) and we can't say anything about that because there is a hole in our *current* theory, but we're working on it... i mean we've been working really hard on that for 60 or 70 years, and it turns out this is not an easy problem... we're probably going to need to build a particle accelerator about the size of the orbit of mars... (queue application for more lab space... and more space labs...)

and then it does not say 'it got more and more ordered'

it VERY specifically says, everything was in a highly ordered state, which is kinda weird and funky, but then some interesting things happen as it all became more and more disordered, it turns out the things which were able to keep their order by exporting order to their environment we really good at keeping themselves around, cause, eh, they could export their disorder... and that lead to some of them evolving...

the fact that most people don't learn this is probably because education is not about learning or knowledge, it is about making people useful to society. And how has knowing any of this 'real' science helped anyone get a job??? Science, no physics education in school is designed to make people know how to wire a battery up, or become an engineer...

Logic is not "personal" in that it can apply to me, but not you. It is opinion, then. Logic is universal.

But I disagree the using God makes an argument "cheap". To the Christian, it makes it perfect. You may logically disgree...since you suggest that logic is personal....but if you agree that logicis personal, then you can't refute the logic of a Christian, can you? Because generally speaking, the logic of a "believer" works like this.....There was *A*, and then something unscientific/illogical happened *(Angel appears and kills my foe...)* and then we lived in *B* VERY logical to a believer in God and Angels...but pure fantasy to you. So, to you....logic needs to be more than "internally consistent" to be valid, does it not?

yes, logic is universal. If i take A + B and get C, and you take A + B you should also get C

but if i take A + God, and you take A + militant Atheism, then we're bound to come to a different conclusion.

And when you only invoke God to explain the bits of the Universe which our science has failed to yet comprehend, then you're using a cheap trick to cover up the fact that there are still things we can't explain... it is cheap in the sense that it doesn't require much effort/thought.

AND the case of the big bang is a great one, I don't know if there was a big bang, and if there was how it happened. But i do not require that God exists to start it off. (it is possible that God started off the big bang, but the fact that i, and everyone else, doesn't understand what started the big bang does not mean we need to invoke 'God')