In my experience, they try to overcome this by claiming no one ever suffered more torture than jesus.
I find that infuriating for many reasons, but the main one being that jesus was tortured for hours, many people throughout history have lived entire LIVES of torture, slavery, sex slavery, etc. and been tortured repeatedly if not daily for DECADES.
People have absolutely suffered more than jesus.
And, if you don't worship him, Jesus will send you to hell to be tortured for eternity. That's not even slightly comparable to what he supposedly experienced.
Hell, I'm fairly certain Romans crucified more people then him. It was considered go to method of execution if you wanted to humiliate and degrade the victim, since it was one of the most painful execution methods
Edit to add: and not just Romans. Alexander the Great crucified 2000 men after winning the Siege of Tyre
He also died REALLY FAST for a crucifixion, too. He didn't suffer nearly as much as other crucifixion victims, so yeah... there's that.
So incredibly infuriating. "No one ever suffered more than jesus." Ahler's-Danlos Syndrome would like to have a word...
The main one I get is "he sacrificed his huMaN LiFe" (the human life that was concocted specifically for the purpose of being sacrificed as a fix to his problems in the first place).
LMAO. Why would any GOD care about giving up the limitation and misery of human life? That kind of seems like saying, "I sacrificed the bowel cancer I had and now I'm stuck with excellent health. Please be sad for me," instead of saying, "Yay, I beat cancer!"
You... poor thing... I guess?
Not saying you should believe this or not but I had the same feeling. I asked a friend and they gave a good response that made me think. She said Jesus died for all our sins. So it wasn’t just his body torture which compared to some atrocities wasn’t that bad. When he died he took the pain of all of our sins for every person for all of time. And that was why it was such a huge sacrifice.
That's a nice pat answer, but it doesn't help anything, indeed it makes it worse. That's unbiblical, is the problem that you and your "friend" face.
Ezekiel 18 is explicit that human sacrifice is UNACCEPTABLE and the only ACCEPTABLE sacrifice is "repentance":
>19 Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live.
# 20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
>21 ***But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live,***
# he shall not die.
>22 All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.
>
>23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?
So any human sacrifice for sins, including jesus, is unacceptable to the god of the OT.
Now we come full circle to the fact that jesus cannot possibly be the Jewish messiah, AND he also cannot be a sacrifice for sin, because the sins of the sinner are upon THEM and only them. Their only escape is repentance.
So which part of the bible lies? The "no human sacrifices, for that is an abomination to the lord" (Jeremiah 7:31; Hosea 6:6; 2 Kings 16:3; Matthew 9:13) or the "jesus was a human sacrifice" part?
>Ezekiel 20:31 When you present your gifts
# and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day.
>And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you.
Are human sacrifices good or bad? Does god mean it when he says the blood of the sinner is on the sinner, or was he joking? Joshing around a bit, I guess.
So human sacrifices are fine? Good news to Abraham, surely.
Did you know that when Abraham tried to kill his son as a sacrifice, god never spoke to him nor appeared to him again? Yahweh said "give him to me," he didn't say MURDER HIM.
I mean, fake story, obviously, but still hilarious how wrong christians get it!
Christianity is a blood and death cult.
Sin doesn’t exist. The claims of the bible are not to be adjudicated based on more claims from the bible. Explain how your answer is an answer. There is no Permanent Record of all the bad things that you subjectively determined were worthy of forgiveness. It is a complete non answer; literally just made up.
First: countless people have suffered horrible deaths. Jesus wasn't unique.
Second: there is no biblical basis for the story that Jesus went to hell. It's a great addition to the narrative so it was added and accepted as gospel truth.
Third (and my biggest argument): if the price for sin was eternal damnation - and they say Jesus paid that price - then Jesus should still be in hell suffering damnation for eternity. Instead, they say Jesus is living the luxe life in heaven and still sending people to hell.
Their fairytale makes no sense, even on the most surface level. They pick and choose things that sound good but there is no cohesiveness in their "salvation story".
Honestly, Jesus' death of being hung by his hands and feet by nails then stabbed with a spear are like low level evil on the human murder scale. Hell the birds did blood eagles and just left them alive until their lungs collapsed or something. He didn't have it that bad. But I agree with you completely.
Look at it as a fictional story, I think that much pain and torture is bad enough to qualify as a sacrifice. Heroes are asked to sacrifice all sorts of things in fiction besides their lives.
In a vaccuum, being crucified even if you come back to life later qualifies as a sacrifice that takes a lot of courage and love to endure.
In the context of why it's required, it's still a dumb system. "Every offense of every degree deserves eternal punishment, so I will endure a non-eternal punishment to cover everyone's punishment, then everybody who commits every offense of every degree shall be rewarded with eternal paradise for believing I did that, but antone who doesn't believe I did that shall still be tortured for eternity." Oh, my gosh, the Christian god really is an Ayn Rand villain!
Reading between the lines:
Jesus arrives at Jerusalem, knowing his enemies are planning to kill him just as they killed his cousin, John the Baptist. But Jesus had a plan....
Flamboyant Clothing become what people focus on rather than the person. So He arrives in Jerusalem wearing a noticable seamless garment. He has arranged for a crowd to keep the authorities at bay, until he slips away. All the authorities know is that Flamboyant seamless garment.
Next is the "prayer in the isolated garden". Jesus has switched clothing and isn't recognized. Among the disciples at the gathering is a patsy, who is ringer for Jesus. The patsy is beaten senseless and dressed in that seamless garment. This is who Judas identifies to the authorities, and they arrest him.
At the sham trial, the prisoner is still unable to comprehend the situation, and remains silent. He is crucified and buried.
On the third day, Jesus and the loyal disciples steal the body from the grave. Jesus makes an appearance, which becomes the Glorious Resurrection Story.
Then Jesus leaves Israel taking his scheme to the Gentiles using a new identity: Paul...
Thank you for reading my true crime inspired story. I look at a supernatural events and replace them with a clever fraud.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the original members of the church believed that they were living in the End Times, and that Jesus would be returning within their lifetimes.
It's quite clear that the apostles believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and the son of God. When he died, he defeated death itself, and came back to life, and was now going to usher in a new, perfect world, where death has no meaning. He made the ultimate sacrifice to save mankind from death itself.
But... nothing changed. Jesus didn't come back from the heavens to usher in this new paradise. And slowly, the people that were waiting for him began to die off. Death, it seems, had not been conquered after all.
So the narrative changed slightly. The church leaders reassured their followers that not only would the living followers ascend to be at Jesus's side, but that the dead faithful would rise up back to life as well and join them. The son of God had sacrificed himself so he could defeat death, after all!
But time went on, Jesus did not return, and even the dead were getting past the point of having much left to rise up. So the narrative changed again. It was a spiritual battle that was won, not a literally physical one. Jesus didn't die to save the physical world, but our souls. He served as an ultimate sacrifice to purify our souls, so we don't have to really worry about our deceased loved ones. They're actually spiritually up in Jesus's paradise! And when he returns, any minute now, he'll finally bring with him that new, perfect world. We just have to wait.
In the beginning, the sacrifice was one that would've changed the entire dynamic of the world and everybody who lived in it. He would've conquered death, and made it so that he could found a new, perfect kingdom on earth.
When that didn't happen, it sort of devolved to a sacrifice that was less tangible and more about enduring a few days of pain and death, with no lasting consequences to himself, in order to save people from his own judgement. But also, to be very vague and inefficient with the knowledge of how that works and where it spreads, so that no only will his own followers fight to the death over how many fingers are used when making the sign of the cross, but the vast majority of people in the world will die without having a chance to be saved.
They try to use 1 Peter to justify this belief. There are a couple of verses, 1 Peter 3:19 and 1 Peter 4:6 that state he "preached to the dead" basically.
So it may be arguable if it's in the bable or not... but IMO, the "evidence" is shallow at best.
Which in itself only makes sense from a universalist perspective where it's still possible to repent after you go to hell. Modern mainstream Christian theology is dishonest and inconsistent either way.
> Modern mainstream Christian theology is dishonest and inconsistent either way.
It's all dishonest and inconsistent, except for the ones that are like Westboro... not at all ashamed of being malicious savages.
I've actually heard this brought up a lot. "God sacrificed a day and a half" is a pretty common saying, at least in my experience.
When I was a Christian, I responded with something like this:
That is completely undermining the suffering that Jesus had to experience. He was fully human when this occurred, so he experienced the full pain of the crucifixion, which is one of the worst ways for someone to die. He also took in all the sins of humanity during a few hours when everything went dark. We can't possibly imagine what he went through during that process. He also had to overcome Hell, which is literally the worst torture that can possibly be imagined. The fact that the crucifixion and suffering in Hell are not unique do nothing to change the fact that God Himself went through all of that for us, when He didn't have to.
I don't argue that point now, even as an atheist, because I think it's very reductionist and it doesn't point out any real contradictions. It assumes that Christians should believe that God had to suffer more in order to be worthy of worship, but that doesn't make sense because they would worship him anyways because they believe he created them and is omnipotent and omnibenevolent. At most, it's a little embarrassing, but Christians don't tend to be bothered by that. All you're likely to achieve by peddling this is the Christian getting upset and having their persecution complex validated.
My argument against Christianity is the Jesus story is about denouncing personal responsibility for worshipping a dead Jew. also thr history of Christianity is shady.
I guess someone 100% perfect had to die, in order to fulfill all god’s righteous wrath so it wouldn’t be directed at us. I don’t think Jesus “went to hell” for a day and a half, although it’s interesting to think about it working like that
Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say Jesus descended into hell. Only that "the Grave" was not his final destination, i.e., he resurrected after dying. But nowhere does it say he went to hell.
Oh, sorry if I came off like I was "Um Ackshully"ing you. I was criticizing the christians who do believe the hell part as a reason why a couple days of being dead was somehow the ultimate sacrifice. I wasn't meaning to criticize your post.
No, it's all good. I didn't think you were criticizing at all.
But yeah, whether a Christian frames it as going to hell or just ceasing to exist, if it's only temporary, then it is, by definition, not a sacrifice. I'd just like them to be challenged more on the fact that the resurrection cancels out the sacrifice. The two most important parts of their theology put together results in it having zero meaning, and they continue to get away with never addressing that.
Apologists will always give some wack answer, but if this issue is brought to the attention of the mainstream population enough times, it can be key in deconstruction for probably millions of Christians.
In my experience, they try to overcome this by claiming no one ever suffered more torture than jesus. I find that infuriating for many reasons, but the main one being that jesus was tortured for hours, many people throughout history have lived entire LIVES of torture, slavery, sex slavery, etc. and been tortured repeatedly if not daily for DECADES. People have absolutely suffered more than jesus.
And, if you don't worship him, Jesus will send you to hell to be tortured for eternity. That's not even slightly comparable to what he supposedly experienced.
Hell, I'm fairly certain Romans crucified more people then him. It was considered go to method of execution if you wanted to humiliate and degrade the victim, since it was one of the most painful execution methods Edit to add: and not just Romans. Alexander the Great crucified 2000 men after winning the Siege of Tyre
He also died REALLY FAST for a crucifixion, too. He didn't suffer nearly as much as other crucifixion victims, so yeah... there's that. So incredibly infuriating. "No one ever suffered more than jesus." Ahler's-Danlos Syndrome would like to have a word...
The main one I get is "he sacrificed his huMaN LiFe" (the human life that was concocted specifically for the purpose of being sacrificed as a fix to his problems in the first place).
LMAO. Why would any GOD care about giving up the limitation and misery of human life? That kind of seems like saying, "I sacrificed the bowel cancer I had and now I'm stuck with excellent health. Please be sad for me," instead of saying, "Yay, I beat cancer!" You... poor thing... I guess?
Not saying you should believe this or not but I had the same feeling. I asked a friend and they gave a good response that made me think. She said Jesus died for all our sins. So it wasn’t just his body torture which compared to some atrocities wasn’t that bad. When he died he took the pain of all of our sins for every person for all of time. And that was why it was such a huge sacrifice.
That's a nice pat answer, but it doesn't help anything, indeed it makes it worse. That's unbiblical, is the problem that you and your "friend" face. Ezekiel 18 is explicit that human sacrifice is UNACCEPTABLE and the only ACCEPTABLE sacrifice is "repentance": >19 Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. # 20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. >21 ***But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live,*** # he shall not die. >22 All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. > >23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live? So any human sacrifice for sins, including jesus, is unacceptable to the god of the OT. Now we come full circle to the fact that jesus cannot possibly be the Jewish messiah, AND he also cannot be a sacrifice for sin, because the sins of the sinner are upon THEM and only them. Their only escape is repentance. So which part of the bible lies? The "no human sacrifices, for that is an abomination to the lord" (Jeremiah 7:31; Hosea 6:6; 2 Kings 16:3; Matthew 9:13) or the "jesus was a human sacrifice" part? >Ezekiel 20:31 When you present your gifts # and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. >And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you. Are human sacrifices good or bad? Does god mean it when he says the blood of the sinner is on the sinner, or was he joking? Joshing around a bit, I guess. So human sacrifices are fine? Good news to Abraham, surely. Did you know that when Abraham tried to kill his son as a sacrifice, god never spoke to him nor appeared to him again? Yahweh said "give him to me," he didn't say MURDER HIM. I mean, fake story, obviously, but still hilarious how wrong christians get it! Christianity is a blood and death cult.
Sin doesn’t exist. The claims of the bible are not to be adjudicated based on more claims from the bible. Explain how your answer is an answer. There is no Permanent Record of all the bad things that you subjectively determined were worthy of forgiveness. It is a complete non answer; literally just made up.
The idea that someone i never met died for something i didnt do yet is repugnant
First: countless people have suffered horrible deaths. Jesus wasn't unique. Second: there is no biblical basis for the story that Jesus went to hell. It's a great addition to the narrative so it was added and accepted as gospel truth. Third (and my biggest argument): if the price for sin was eternal damnation - and they say Jesus paid that price - then Jesus should still be in hell suffering damnation for eternity. Instead, they say Jesus is living the luxe life in heaven and still sending people to hell. Their fairytale makes no sense, even on the most surface level. They pick and choose things that sound good but there is no cohesiveness in their "salvation story".
Honestly, Jesus' death of being hung by his hands and feet by nails then stabbed with a spear are like low level evil on the human murder scale. Hell the birds did blood eagles and just left them alive until their lungs collapsed or something. He didn't have it that bad. But I agree with you completely.
Look at it as a fictional story, I think that much pain and torture is bad enough to qualify as a sacrifice. Heroes are asked to sacrifice all sorts of things in fiction besides their lives. In a vaccuum, being crucified even if you come back to life later qualifies as a sacrifice that takes a lot of courage and love to endure. In the context of why it's required, it's still a dumb system. "Every offense of every degree deserves eternal punishment, so I will endure a non-eternal punishment to cover everyone's punishment, then everybody who commits every offense of every degree shall be rewarded with eternal paradise for believing I did that, but antone who doesn't believe I did that shall still be tortured for eternity." Oh, my gosh, the Christian god really is an Ayn Rand villain!
Reading between the lines: Jesus arrives at Jerusalem, knowing his enemies are planning to kill him just as they killed his cousin, John the Baptist. But Jesus had a plan.... Flamboyant Clothing become what people focus on rather than the person. So He arrives in Jerusalem wearing a noticable seamless garment. He has arranged for a crowd to keep the authorities at bay, until he slips away. All the authorities know is that Flamboyant seamless garment. Next is the "prayer in the isolated garden". Jesus has switched clothing and isn't recognized. Among the disciples at the gathering is a patsy, who is ringer for Jesus. The patsy is beaten senseless and dressed in that seamless garment. This is who Judas identifies to the authorities, and they arrest him. At the sham trial, the prisoner is still unable to comprehend the situation, and remains silent. He is crucified and buried. On the third day, Jesus and the loyal disciples steal the body from the grave. Jesus makes an appearance, which becomes the Glorious Resurrection Story. Then Jesus leaves Israel taking his scheme to the Gentiles using a new identity: Paul... Thank you for reading my true crime inspired story. I look at a supernatural events and replace them with a clever fraud.
There's a whole thing about Thomas apparently being Jesus's twin or looking just like him. I think the gnostics might have proposed something similar.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the original members of the church believed that they were living in the End Times, and that Jesus would be returning within their lifetimes. It's quite clear that the apostles believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and the son of God. When he died, he defeated death itself, and came back to life, and was now going to usher in a new, perfect world, where death has no meaning. He made the ultimate sacrifice to save mankind from death itself. But... nothing changed. Jesus didn't come back from the heavens to usher in this new paradise. And slowly, the people that were waiting for him began to die off. Death, it seems, had not been conquered after all. So the narrative changed slightly. The church leaders reassured their followers that not only would the living followers ascend to be at Jesus's side, but that the dead faithful would rise up back to life as well and join them. The son of God had sacrificed himself so he could defeat death, after all! But time went on, Jesus did not return, and even the dead were getting past the point of having much left to rise up. So the narrative changed again. It was a spiritual battle that was won, not a literally physical one. Jesus didn't die to save the physical world, but our souls. He served as an ultimate sacrifice to purify our souls, so we don't have to really worry about our deceased loved ones. They're actually spiritually up in Jesus's paradise! And when he returns, any minute now, he'll finally bring with him that new, perfect world. We just have to wait. In the beginning, the sacrifice was one that would've changed the entire dynamic of the world and everybody who lived in it. He would've conquered death, and made it so that he could found a new, perfect kingdom on earth. When that didn't happen, it sort of devolved to a sacrifice that was less tangible and more about enduring a few days of pain and death, with no lasting consequences to himself, in order to save people from his own judgement. But also, to be very vague and inefficient with the knowledge of how that works and where it spreads, so that no only will his own followers fight to the death over how many fingers are used when making the sign of the cross, but the vast majority of people in the world will die without having a chance to be saved.
That part about going to hell was added later and is not in the Bible.
They try to use 1 Peter to justify this belief. There are a couple of verses, 1 Peter 3:19 and 1 Peter 4:6 that state he "preached to the dead" basically. So it may be arguable if it's in the bable or not... but IMO, the "evidence" is shallow at best.
Which in itself only makes sense from a universalist perspective where it's still possible to repent after you go to hell. Modern mainstream Christian theology is dishonest and inconsistent either way.
> Modern mainstream Christian theology is dishonest and inconsistent either way. It's all dishonest and inconsistent, except for the ones that are like Westboro... not at all ashamed of being malicious savages.
I've actually heard this brought up a lot. "God sacrificed a day and a half" is a pretty common saying, at least in my experience. When I was a Christian, I responded with something like this: That is completely undermining the suffering that Jesus had to experience. He was fully human when this occurred, so he experienced the full pain of the crucifixion, which is one of the worst ways for someone to die. He also took in all the sins of humanity during a few hours when everything went dark. We can't possibly imagine what he went through during that process. He also had to overcome Hell, which is literally the worst torture that can possibly be imagined. The fact that the crucifixion and suffering in Hell are not unique do nothing to change the fact that God Himself went through all of that for us, when He didn't have to. I don't argue that point now, even as an atheist, because I think it's very reductionist and it doesn't point out any real contradictions. It assumes that Christians should believe that God had to suffer more in order to be worthy of worship, but that doesn't make sense because they would worship him anyways because they believe he created them and is omnipotent and omnibenevolent. At most, it's a little embarrassing, but Christians don't tend to be bothered by that. All you're likely to achieve by peddling this is the Christian getting upset and having their persecution complex validated.
My argument against Christianity is the Jesus story is about denouncing personal responsibility for worshipping a dead Jew. also thr history of Christianity is shady.
I’ve heard that Jesus took a three day weekend off from work so we must give our lives to him.
I guess someone 100% perfect had to die, in order to fulfill all god’s righteous wrath so it wouldn’t be directed at us. I don’t think Jesus “went to hell” for a day and a half, although it’s interesting to think about it working like that
Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say Jesus descended into hell. Only that "the Grave" was not his final destination, i.e., he resurrected after dying. But nowhere does it say he went to hell.
True, but I sometimes use "died" and "went to hell" interchangeably because a large number of Christians do think he went to hell.
Oh, sorry if I came off like I was "Um Ackshully"ing you. I was criticizing the christians who do believe the hell part as a reason why a couple days of being dead was somehow the ultimate sacrifice. I wasn't meaning to criticize your post.
No, it's all good. I didn't think you were criticizing at all. But yeah, whether a Christian frames it as going to hell or just ceasing to exist, if it's only temporary, then it is, by definition, not a sacrifice. I'd just like them to be challenged more on the fact that the resurrection cancels out the sacrifice. The two most important parts of their theology put together results in it having zero meaning, and they continue to get away with never addressing that. Apologists will always give some wack answer, but if this issue is brought to the attention of the mainstream population enough times, it can be key in deconstruction for probably millions of Christians.
Their narrative says that the Lamb of God was sacrificed.