Did He Really Have to Die the Way He Did?

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As I may have mentioned before, what you choose to believe or disbelieve has no bearing whatsoever on reality. That an alarmingly large number of people firmly and fervently believe that the earth is flat does NOT alter the reality of a round earth that orbits the sun.
 
Imagine blind interpretations! That'd be abstract or dark and formless in the beginning as an initiation to the lexus ... few would go there if they believe they understand everything to begin with.

Thus there is nothing to learn ... and all is comfortable just the way it is even if nemesis is coming down on us! This happens after the hubris ... ask fallen tyrants ... including the POTUS who is threatening to shut down all social media as it defines things wrong in his definition. Some very intelligent people support the POTUS ... in their private opinions! It appears private concerns don't go far in a vast civil network ... like arachnoid oils in the panic mechanism of the endogenous neural system! The antigenicity ... or endogeneity! Really messes up the inflammation syndrome ... that internal burn?

Could a well rounded mined be flattened? Like quicksilver ...
 
So, can we get back to Jesus dying? Because right now it's the thread that's dying.:oops: And I don't that's going to atone for anyone's sins.:whistle:

There are two questions here:

Did Jesus have to die?

Did Jesus have to die a horrible, painful death?

The article seems to argue a "no" to both.

unsafe and RevJohn clearly argue a "yes" to both.
 
We have to remember a characteristic of The Bible. Much of it is made up of folk tales. The tale of Noah's Ark, for example, is absurd.
Samples of all living creatures to be put on an ark and the whole world to be flooded? Get real. There were not just a hundred or so creatures to be saved for future samples. There were thousands including birds ( have no idea how many species), camels, horses, polar bears, penquins, tigers. And all over a world that people of that time and place didn't even know existed. It wouild have been quite a stunt to walk back to the middle east (or swim back) with two polar bears. Oh, and they would need to capture two each of ants, bees,, worms.....

All of these creatures needed specialized food - for the trip, while on the ark, and even for some time as the earth recovered from its flooding. And would have taken decades to accomplish even if it could have been accomplished..

As for Adam and Eve, we have found samples of our earliest humans. They were very primitive creatures indeed. They had no language. They certainly couldn't have left behind any written record.

The Bible is full of problems like these. Even the exodus from Egypt has to be taken with a grain of salt.

I could wish Christians would pay more attention to the teaching of Jesus. If so, we might remember our Christian centuries as history's worst mass murderers right up to today. And tell us all which commandment justifies that. We might, too, spend some time wondering why Christians, just like other faiths, commonly have no love or respect for those of other faiths. (Thus Dona
 
So, can we get back to Jesus dying? Because right now it's the thread that's dying.:oops: And I don't that's going to atone for anyone's sins.:whistle:

There are two questions here:

Did Jesus have to die?

Did Jesus have to die a horrible, painful death?

The article seems to argue a "no" to both.

unsafe and RevJohn clearly argue a "yes" to both.


Did Jesus have to die? Yes.
We all have to die. It's part of being a human. Everybody dies; even a rabbi from Palestine. The part of him that was fully human, and to die, just as we all die.
Did he have to die when he did at the peak of his life, rather than waiting for a natural death in his old age?
Yes - in order to be true to himself and to his mission: to bring the gospel of God's love to all people, which meant confronting the leaders both in the Temple and in Rome by his words and actions. He didn't really lead a rebellion that he went about doing good among those oppressed by the authorities. He made enemies. He must have known himself, and if he didn't, he was warned by his followers, that it was dangerous enough for him to go to Jerusalem at this time. He could have hidden out and the hills of Galilee and continued working quietly with a small group of people. And eventually perhaps the authorities would've forgot all about him – not worth the bother. That Jesus went to Jerusalem at the busiest time of the year and stood out the temple steps preaching the gospel and confronting those in authority. No wonder he was arrested and sentenced to death.

It have to be a cruel death? Did he have to suffer? We can be pretty sure that if he knew he was going to be executed by the Romans. It would be a cruel death. It seems to me that his prayer in the garden that he wanted to avoid it, but he submitted that it was unavoidable.

What Greater love could be shown than to stand up against corrupt authority with the truth and love.
 
In a parable or metaphor one has to die to start again ... thus small deaths for lesser starts! And up pops little ones ... singular surprises in some circumstances!
 
If that is the case, it was a terrible failure. Christians, within just few centuries became the worst plunderers and murderers the world had even known And they are the most enthusiastic killers and thieves to this day. It was Christians who happily killed most of the native men, women and chldren in the new world and stole their land. That was a holocaust - and, as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (Hitler was also a Christian. - Yes. He was. And almost all his brutal armies were Christians and all blessed by Christian clergy for their bombing and murder. For that matter, The British who fought Hitler, and did it with the cheers of the church, were far greater murderers and thieves than Hitler ever was. The British Empire murdered over 400 million people, often by starvation. It also enslaved tens of millions. The largely Christian U.S. has been busy slaughtering people of Latin America, the native people of the U.S., Canadians, and, especially since 1945, just about everybody in the world.

Every president has been a murderer. George Bush Sr. who led an army of profession thugs from all over the world to murder 200,000 Guatemalans in the 1950s and 60s - with an emphasis on murdering priests, nuns and missionaries. (It has never even made our news.) All through that, he went to church and was welcomed. His son, even more murderous, is also a regular church attender.

Evangelists cheer for Donald Trump who is starving children to death in Venezuela, supplying weapons especially to murder children, including babies, in Yemen - and who will quite possibly plunge into a nuclear war with China ---well, he doesn't go to church. But evangelical Christians slobber all over him.

After more than two thousand years, Christians and their churches still are murderous hypocrites.
 
Oh. Hitler's holocaust was based on the American (Christian) deliberate murder of almost the whole native population of what because the U.S. The Christian George Washington created it, and Hitler admitted in Mein Kampf that his holocaust was based on the American model.
 
What does it mean to be executed as an "Enemy of the State"?

Neither the Buddha, nor Mohammed, needed to be executed in order to form functional world religions. Why did Jesus "have to" die, particularly at such a young age, in a (not for the period, but) rather gruesome manner. How would we feel about hanging a replica of an electric chair around our neck?
 
Or the USA or anyone with the death penalty.....or a system that involves torture

And that includes Canada. Little glimpses lead me to believe that solitary confinement, which has been condemned worldwide as torture (except for the very odd case of a prisoner who needs protection from the rest of the population, like cops, baby-harmers, etc.) is a hugely important tool in the Canadian prison toolbox.
 
And that includes Canada. Little glimpses lead me to believe that solitary confinement, which has been condemned worldwide as torture (except for the very odd case of a prisoner who needs protection from the rest of the population, like cops, baby-harmers, etc.) is a hugely important tool in the Canadian prison toolbox.
Agree
 
I was spent considerable time visiting groups of prisoners in a local pen. The prisoners had to fear the guards, and many had to fear each other. (The worst prison in CAnada was probably Kingston Pen.)
 
Was the resurrection of Jesus a reality? WAs the crucifixion a reality? Or were these just invented stories?
I'd like to know more about the early spread of Christianity. We have, of course, the writing of some of the disciples. But I wish we could have a sense of the
spread and growth of Christianity. We know some of it moved to Rome - but how much?
 
The turning point for Christianity had to be the wedding of church and state in the 4th century.
 
Was the resurrection of Jesus a reality? WAs the crucifixion a reality? Or were these just invented stories?
I'd like to know more about the early spread of Christianity. We have, of course, the writing of some of the disciples. But I wish we could have a sense of the
spread and growth of Christianity. We know some of it moved to Rome - but how much?
Graeme this an interesting video that MAY help you, I really enjoyed it. It's an hour long and contains some great facts instead of just speculation.

 
Waterfall said:
I'm really not trying to be argumentative here, but if God has willed the saved to be saved already, then in the eternal now, hasn't he already put the ones who are saved above the need for a sacrifice? Can those destined to be saved lose their salvation?
This just isn't making sense to me.

There is a moment in the time before time when God makes a decision.

For reasons known only to God, God chooses a time within time to take the action to render that decision complete.

All of it in God's Eternal Now. All of it, from our understanding of time past, action.

It seems like you are equating the decision of God with the action to secure that decision. As if deciding you will have pasta for dinner in the morning is equivalent to eating pasta at dinner. The decision remains unfulfilled without the action.
 
As if deciding you will have pasta for dinner in the morning is equivalent to eating pasta at dinner. The decision remains unfulfilled without the action.

This seems to include only humans who are capable of taking decisions to action. I don't know where this puts those humans who are incapable of any sort of rational/informed decision, nor any actions that might logically forthcome.
 
Mendalla said:
unsafe and RevJohn clearly argue a "yes" to both.

To be fair I don't.

I argue that the testimony of scripture is that it is what happened.

Right up until his arrest in the Garden Jesus has doubts. Somebody was going to have to die otherwise the wages of sin aren't death and somebody has been lying about that for a good long time.

Jesus agrees, so some theologians argue, to pay the debt we owe with his own life.

I don't think that the physical pain was necessary so much as it is a by-product of the execution. The emotional agony, the estrangement between God and God's self also a by-product of Jesus taking our place.

I don't think, a la Mel Gibson's Passion, that Crucifixion was so bland more needed to be added to it. That was torture porn plain and simple.

Rome had access to other forms of execution. I doubt a Jew would get such favours.

Some will point to prophecy. Prophecy is subject to interpretation and what some consider prophetic doesn't actually fall into the genre of prophetic literature. Psalm 22 for example.

At this point arguing that it had to be or it didn't have to be is rendered moot by the reality of what did happen. Crucifixion not a painless way to die.
 
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