Blood and murder of the innocent -- Good!!
It is readily apparent to any atheist that Christianity is an absurdist philosophy (as is Islam). No matter the flavor of Christianity (from liberal to conservative fundamentalist), it fails to pass the laugh test. Now I hate to keep picking on Rapture Ready, but, this is the perfect example of why it is so very easy to reject the theology of Christianity. Paul Vanderstar explains:
Adam and Eve were thrown out from the Garden of Eden before they could eat from the Tree Of Life. Had they eaten, not only would we be in the awful condition of sin, but had God allowed them to eat the fruit of that tree we would have been in an eternal condition of sin and un-redeemable by blood. God loved His children that much that He cast them out of Eden and paradise for a time until His plan of redemption was completed on the cross, but that is getting ahead of this story. Our focus is on the prophecy of Jesus and recognizing our need for a blood covering through the death of an innocent. [emphasis mine]
Blood. There we have it. Blood is the key. Spilling blood is pleasing to God, and only blood can satiate his bloodlust. Taking that theme to today's headlines, maybe all those innocent Iraqi pregnant women and children whose blood is spilled on the pavement (and they subsequently die) is a good thing, for all the guilty Iraqis are now cleansed in their blood. Or some such nonsense.
But my real point here is not cynicism, it is the utterly incomprehensible idea that an all-powerful god would, could, be incapable of redeeming in some other manner than blood. Like simply saying, "Ok, if you ask for forgiveness for the sins of your ancient ancestors, and bow down to me, then I fogive you." But no, the Christian God, seems to be strictly limited to only accepting the blood (death) of innocents as repentence for sins. This alone should give any Christian pause and make them think just how silly their religion is.
Labels: christianity, Rapture, skepticism
posted by jeffperado @ 7:31 PM
3 Comments:
When i wrote the article i wanted to reveal a look into Genesis and a look into a future of a better sacrifice God would provide for mankind.
I do want to clarify God does not have bloodlust and my study does not allude to a lust by God for spilled blood. In fact God loathes blood altogether but had implemented a system to cover sin of His people until the season of time when Jesus completed His minsitry and obtained victory on the cross.
While my claim may not be evident in my study, i do appeal to any who read Genesis or any book of the bible for that matter, to do their own study on God really become informed on what the actual system of sacrifice represented for all of mankind.
God provided a system of sacrifice in blood of an animal to cover sin for a time. He never required blood of a human before and this is very plain from the time of Adam and Eve to the time Christ died on the cross.
The 10 commandments were designed to expose sin and our need for a savior. We cannot keep them. They were given as law knowing we cannot keep them.
Looking at just one commandment (the 8th commandment) think back in your own lives and simply recall if you have ever taken something that did not belong to you (regardless of value). If you stole a paperclip from work or walked out of a store not paying for something (even if it was the cash register person's error and not your own). By definition that would make us a thief.
For arguments sake, whether you believe in God or not, Lets say God judges you by His standard of righteousness. He gave us the 10 commandments and the 8th commandment clearly states "You shall not steal". He has given a law regarding thievery and as a just God he has to judge you by the law or become a liar by just ignoring it or letting it go. (Do you want a God who judges righteously and does not lie or a God who just changes His mind whenever it suits Him?)
Judging you righteously, on the Day Of Judgement will you be found guilty or innocent? A righteous God who does not lie will judge you guilty.
The wages of sin is death and in the end those found guilty will be imprisoned in the Lake Of Fire (also for arguments sake please just assume this is accurate)
If God promises the righteous will enter Heaven and the wicked will inherit a Lake of Fire will a just God release you from prison or remain faithful and true and give you the sentence you have chosen? He will have to carry out His sentence because He is just.
When i say we have chosen our fate, i mean we have chosen not to believe He provided a system of restoration and forgiveness. Because He does not have bloodlust God created a system of sacrifice that points to salvation and restoration. Because He instituted a law that requires blood of an innocent to cover your sin, He created a system of blood sacrifice in the death of an innocent animal prior to His own sacrifice He provided in Christ.
This means those who couldnt keep all the law of the 10 commandments prior to Jesus(all of us are guilty of at least 1)were covered by the satisfaction of the law by the blood of an innocent animal. This sacrifice, whether you agree with it or not, prevented someone dying in his or her own sin to pay the price for what sin calls for which i stated above in a Lake of Fire. God values all of us that much.
What the system of sacrifice pointed to in its cermony and ritual which were all quite tedious and drawn out, was a need by God to provide a better one. just like the one He provided Abraham when He stopped him from sacrificing his own son Isaac.
God provided Jesus as the lamb for a blood offering. Your faith God did this for you removed the need for any other sacrifice ever. His blood sacrificed once for all time was all that was needed for eternity of salvation. Instead of covering ourselves with blood of an animal daily and each year, we are covered by the blood of Jesus in our belief through grace by faith that God provided the ultimate sacrifice in Him.
While you may disagree, it demonstrates His disdain for blood and at the same time satisfying the blood requirement through His own son on our behalf. Our choice is to trust in Him he provided our way out of punishment and receive His son Jesus as our sacrifice and ressurected King, or choose the other choice which is to stand in front of our righteous God on Judgment day without a covering of blood at all.
I know you may not agree but i did just want to demonstrate blood and murder is not good and God did not instruct murder of anyone as your blog title suggests.
Take care
PV
Paul,
First I want to say thank you for commenting here on my criticism of your article on RaptureReady.com
I am not really sure though, just how to respond to your comment. I mean, just how many people died in the Old testament at the hands of Moses, Joshua, David, et al.? They were not simply deniers of God, they were not God's chosen, and so they were unaware of God's law and existence. If killing those who are ignorant is not bloodlust, then please define that term for me. If pregnant women dying via the swords of the Israelites, at the behest and command of God is not bloodlust, then I am at a loss for what that term is supposed to mean. Going back to Genesis, how is a flood that kills every living thing, including pregnant women, and small children, to be interpreted?
I can think on one term, and that is that death and blood is the price to be paid. Leviticus spells out in detail sin offerings to God. Killing and the release of blood upon the altar was required for all sin offerings.
For the sin of picking up sticks on the Sabbath (Saturday, not Sunday) death by stoning was the punishment. And somehow, throwing rocks at someone for working on a Saturday (one of the Ten Commandments, I might add) is not eliciting blood, and can clearly be seen as bloodlust?
The New Testament is no better. God, changes his mind at some point, and decides that humans can, after all, have eternal life. He had clearly decided against that in Genesis, his sole reason for kicking out Adam and Eve. But He decides that the only way he can forgive humans, all humans, is if he, in his other form as his son, goes to earth and allows himself to be murdered. Murdered is appropriate in this context because Jesus was supposed to be innocent. Now if Jesus is God, then allowing Himself to be murdered is tantamount to suicide. But he is also God, so he cannot really die, making his death trivial. So, in the human sense Jesus' death was suicide and murder and required by God to forgive; and in the Godly sense, Jesus' "sacrifice" was as trivial as a hangnail and thus representative of no sacrifice whatsoever.
(Oh, and God did require human blood as a sin sacrifice before Jesus. Abraham was required to kill his son, but was given a last minute reprieve, but the daughter of Jephthah was burned to death as required by God -- Judges 11:39.)
But none of this changes the simple fact that, according to the Bible, Jesus was innocent. And as being innocent, he was required to die by God. That was the only way God would forgive humans -- the death (blood) of the innocent.
The story never made sense, and it still does not make sense. Killing animals, killing children, killing innocent adults is no way to pardon the guilty.
That should be the first clue that the entire concept of Christianity is fabricated.
FYI, Paul wrote more that I could comment on, but I hope that it can be seen that the point of his article, and of my critique is the concept of forgiveness through blood sacrifice, and that of the innocent.
Paul, just quickly here:
you spoke of the 10 Commandments. The problem is this, Paul said in Eph 2:8,9, Rom 3:20,28, and Gal 2:16 that faith alone, not works; saves a man. Yet James 2:24 says both faith and works saves a man. Obeying the commandments is clearly a works. Now look at those 10 commandments. the first four are rules as how to worship or obey God. One of which is the obeying the Sabbath, under penalty of death. Now Jesus, disobeyed this very commandment. So what is the lesson we are to learn here? Either all Christians who work on the Sabbath are condemned to death, or they need to ask forgiveness for this transgression to avoid the death penalty. Or is there some other way to interpret them, some way that Paul would approve of which required no adherance.
Then there are the other six commandments. How did incest get left off, or rape, or abortion, yet lying is one of the biggeys. Think about it, lying is categorically wrong according to the Ten commandments, even though lying could save someone's life (a wife is nearly beaten to death and begs for your help, do you tell the husband the truth, where she is, or do you lie to him?) When is rape ever right? Yet it did not make the 10 commandments.
The best example is the Tenth commandment. It goes completely against what we as Americans hold most dear: Capitalism.
Even when it comes to something as simple as the 10 Commandments, we can easily see that there is nothing simple about them. Do we follow the advice of Paul and ignore them, or do we follow the advice of James and follow them? If we follow them, do we do things we consider "immoral" like allowing battered wives to be beaten some more, or do we turn against our American heritage and renounce Capitalism? Do we condemn Christians who work on the Sabbath? The whole moral morass is quite complex. Too complex it seems for any Christians to agree upon. And this is only the 10 Commandments. I have not even mentioned the teachings of Jesus here. Where wealthy = hellbound, and yet many of today's Christians are wealthy.
Are you confused yet?
You should be. It is only Christians who refuse to see these problems for what they are, who say there is no confusion.
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