The Wonderer (Admirari)

Thanks for the discussion (had to hurry to catch the train to work). Looks like I finally found the first born-again Christian that’s a decent person - although it shouldn’t have taken as long as two years. Please do continue thinking critically about your faith and the Bible and don’t go down the road of excusing genocide and other atrocities of the Old Testament just because (people of that time thought) God commanded it.

 #3 Nope, according to Judaism, the animal does not represent the person. It’s not a substitution that dies instead of the sinner. That was probably invented sometime after Reformation to justify the penal substitution atonement.
            
            I find the whole idea that can’t come near God without dying really strange. I mean, I’ve spoken face-to-face in spirit with both God the Father and Jesus, and I’m not dead. I doubt I’m completely sinless (although I’m weird, e.g. apparently can’t feel hate).
             #4 Hmm, I hadn’t actually thought of the scenario that way. So in this one case, Jesus does not have the authority to forgive and must beg the Father to do it. That would make him less of God than the Father.
            
            And there’s another redefinition of words I don’t particularly like. It’s not forgiveness if someone else pays the debt. As I see it, a truly forgiving god would say something along the lines, ”I know you’ve messed up terribly and I still love you. You’re my beloved child. We can fix this together, so please come home. I’ll keep the door open as long as it takes.” And if they refuse, then that’s their choice.

 #1: I’m all for sacrificial love, like Jesus’s death is portrayed symbolically in the Chronicles of Narnia. My problem is the idea of God (the Father) demanding that sacrifice. For it to be a sacrifice made of love, some outside force must be demanding it. If God himself demands human sacrifice, God is not good.
            
            For the record, God isn’t really the ”very source of Life”. There are older things in the spirit realm. There are more destinations than heaven and hell. You’ll probably call it Satan’s deception, but I have seen far too much to believe in the exclusivity of any religion. (No, I didn’t fall for witchcraft or New Age practices. I was born with the ability to see and talk to spirits.)
             #2 That’s rubbish. We have archeological evidence (and textual evidence from the Bible) that Yahweh was originally just a minor god of Canaanite pantheon. If you’re interested, I recommend Thom Stark’s ”The Human Faces of God”.
            
            As for (blood) sacrifices, I don’t remember seeing any instances where the prophets would say that do offer sacrifices, but do it with a correct mindset. For example Hosea (quoted by Jesus) and Samuel and David (in 1 and 2 Samuel) pretty plainly say that God does not want sacrifices / burnt offerings.
            
            There’s also the little problem that if all the books of Torah are equally valid, sacrificing your firstborn child to God was a divine command. It was ”everything that opens the womb”, not just with animals they owned. Prophets speak against this too. I don’t remember the names, but I think one said God did not mean that, another that God gave people bad commands to punish them.

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