Why did God have his son (Jesus) murdered?

If God is so powerful why did he have to?

by killing his son?
that's where i lost it as a kid. the dude was willing to kill his own son to save his sorry soul.

Jepthah is going off to fight the Philistines and before he heads out he promises God that if he wins, that when he returns the first living thing that comes out of his house will be sacrficed to God. SO he heads off and slays the Philistines and when he comes back the first thing that heads out of the house is his only child, his daughter. He doesn't go back on his promise and God doesn't sent and angels to save Jepthah's daughter.

Lets just say
If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move a moutain.

Does this mean that I don't have the faith Mr.bush does because then I could have stopped the invasion?

Mr Bush heard the voice of God on yeah
Oh he has faith all right
It hardwork.... we determine to stay our course..... we spreading freedom and liberty....I grief with the families.... putting our soldiers in harm way.... oh yeah he has faith

Faith that the drug MSM is massive doses will keep the Giant sleeping.
Faith that his bank account will grow as the US deficit get worse.
Faith that the majority of the US people will just swalow up what ever garbage cause they are convice by him that That there was a moment of accountability and that was the 2004 election.

Get my drift. Dont worry it everyone fault like he say of this mess
why he did the right thing with the support of the people.

hand
Do you have faith that the goverment must be by the people for the people.
If you have then how far that faith should carry you.

Always look at these stories in the historical context of the time. In the religions of the area (Canaan, Moab, etc.), the first born child was often given to Molech (Chemosh, Baal) in times of extreme hardship, this was considered the ultimate sacrifice. So, Abraham understands how the world religions work. When God asks him to do the same, he understands the importance (ultimate sacrifice) and does what anyone in the time period would do, if they were a believer (a test). What God does, though, is extraordinary in that day/age. God stops the sacrifice and tells Abraham that nevermore is the firstborn physically sacrificed to him...we shall see later that it is their service the God asks. Remember, God is a liberal, and if love. Many things seem harsh from this day and age, but from the time-period, they are loving, caring, and sometimes strict lessons for a people in their infancy.

I dunno. :shrug: :hide:

Remember, Jesus died to save mankind.

vaguely remembered theologyism there.

The hell and stupidity that the god created?

Man is quite able to be stupid and turn the planet into a hellhole without any help.

Their existed darkness and void before God. Just because God always existed and always will exist, doesn't mean that God is everything. God created the heavens and the Earth...it who knows what was their before and around (just thinking aloud).

You know the bit about Exodus and how God sent Moses to free the Jews and of course Pharoah refused and kept on refusing till God unleashed the plagues. Well what they don't tell you and is actually in the book is that God keeps on hardening Pharoahs heart and makes him to refuse to release the Jews.

It is passages like this that destroy the credibility of the entire religion for me.

I see this as the acts that God brings about are what harden Pharaoh's heart. For example, a murderer kills your mother...he also hardens your heart to him...he doesn't metaphysically harden your heart, but it is hardened, all the same. God knew, though, in advance how Pharaoh would react, so was able to use this as an object lesson to the world. (plus, it scored his people the treasure they would need to create the ark and sanctuary).

how could he have created Satan?

Not everything God created was considered good. Plus, the Bible doesn't recount all of history and creation, it is just kind of a recap in Genesis (a "What has gone before"). And, "good" could just mean natural. Is it good that a poor baby bunny gets slaughtered by a cat? Good for one...bad for one...but natural. This one is an interesting philosophical debate, but one that no one can answer until we meet God...or not.

wouldnt that put a crack in the whole virgin birth ?

1) He didnt have his son murdered

Please rephrase your question

The Pharisees did.

The Pharisees advocated cooperation with the Roman Empire. They believed heaven could be obtained through the mindless observance of 600 some odd meaningless rituals performed daily. They were the "fundamentalists" of their day.

Get it? God incarnates in the flesh, teaches the Way of salvation, and the priests nail him to a tree. Recall also Jesus' one recorded act of violence: Driving the money changers from the temple.

Freepers, take heed.

I wasn't saying God actually murdered his son with his own hands, just that he could have easily stopped it but didn't. God in effect murdered his son by not stopping it from occurring.

God, I hate that answer ... but it is the correct one.

God gave us a paradise, a savage garden. But we didn't want to be part of the food chain, we wanted to dominate it. So we learned to kill the lion and the deer. We built walled cities and made better spears and armor, and proceeded to kill more of our brethern than all the lions and panthers ever did.

Now, we have made ourselves all these wondrous inventions. Cars and planes and computers and DVD players ... all these toys. And we have transformed the savage garden into a concentration camp of the soul. Here in Atlanta, we just recently decided that homeless people should be allowed the beg on the streets for a little while longer. How fucking generous of us.

Now we have all these powers ... but we are powerless over our own hate and passion, and powerless over the changes in the atmosphere we have wrought. There is no corner of earth we have not explored, pissed on, defiled or consumed.

So why should we be surprised? God sent us Jesus, Buddha, and a hundred others who taught us different ways to find The Way. Most of them were nailed to a tree, burned at the stake, or simply ignored. All had their name taken in vain by those who claimed to follow them.

Don't blame God for this. It is the human condition. With free will comes error. Ours is the right to be wrong. And here's a big hint. The word "sin" comes from the Greeks ... specifically from the martial art of archery. And in that context, sin is a bad habit that causes the archer to miss his mark. Following that allegory, to sin is to do something that causes us to miss the mark and create misery instead of joy.

If I had to summarize the message of the Bible in one sentence, it would be this warning: "What you fear will meet you half way."

And we have transformed the savage garden into a concentration camp of the soul -- not only are you a poet, but the Muse rides upon your shoulders. Blessed be; I too have sat in an uneasy chair.

I can no longer call myself Christian because I have been fortunate enough to live in places sufficiently wild the spirits of the land yet endure and the cosmos again whispers for recognition as Mother, but I tried to be Christian for a long dreary while, and I would add only one thing to your analysis of the Bible: that it also offers itself -- or rather the spiritual package contained therein -- as an antidote to the very fear you named. Which is why Christianity is so attractive -- at least until one realizes that Being is not a straight line, a single one-time passage, but instead an infinitely huge multifaceted tree upon which we are all but tiny twigs, yet simultaneously a Great Wheel, like the seasons, like the weather, its endless motion spiral as the galaxies...its essence three-faced, like the Moon.


Edit: correction of accidentally misstated autobiographical fact in first sentence of second paragraph.

The "savage garden" image is an old one, most notoriously employed by Ann Rice's Vampire Lestat. The description of the modern world as a "concentration camp of the soul" is borrowed from the mystic Andrew Harvey ("The Way of Passion"). Alas, no muse operating here ... just a clever plagiarist.

My take on these things is not distant from your own. The matter of God/Goddess/whatever presents all sorts of big questions we can never definitively answer. As the poet Ranier Rilke observed, sometimes you just have to decide to love the questions anyway.

Our brains are too small to understand reality. Our perceptions are too narrow. We can't take it all in. So we develop specialized viewpoints. Science, for example, is a specialized method of organizing thought, effort and perception so that we can advance on certain types of questions. But there are other questions that are simply not approachable through the scientific method ... questions like, "What is the good? How does one achieve inner peace while the world loses its mind? Is there experience after death?"

Similarly, no religion can provide all the answers one might require on spiritual matters. The spectrum of valid spiritual experience is too broad to capture in a single theological system. Religion tries to "put God in a box", but that can't possibly work. Jesus opposed this idea very specifically ... which is one reason his teaching places such emphasis on developing what evangelicals call a "personal relationship with God".

Unfortunately, they appear to misunderstand what is intended. It is not a relationship between two personalities, one mortal and the other transcendent. Rather, what Jesus taught, was a methodology whereby direct experience without the mediation of priests could be obtained. Upon application of that methodology, each of us will obtain a unique set of experiences that are our own or "personal" and which cannot directly be shared or reproduced by others.

Ultimately, the message gets lost in the symbols that bear it. Priests tend to focus on the symbols ("false gods") rather than the reality they attempt to convey through the devices of poetry, allegory and art. The symbols become the object of reverence. The messenger is exalted over the message. This has happened also to Buddhism, though to a much lesser degree than experienced in Christianity. (Thanks a lot, Saint Paul, you bitch!)

The problem with the monotheistic model of God is not that it is incorrect but that people get lazy with it. Gee, there is one God. We seem to require that God be seen as a personality. Since God is now a Big Personality in our minds, God must have a gender. In the case of the Hebraic family of religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), a male God image is chosen. So now we endow Him with a Celestial Penis and cause him, very Jupiter like, to descend to Earth and fuck Mary.

In taking that approach, God is shoved into a box of our choosing. Well, not really. It is our understanding of God that becomes confined. This wreaks havoc ... Egyptian mythology is replete with tales of the struggle of God and Goddess for supremacy. But the God and the Goddess do not contend, the struggle is between human beings carrying their understanding God in different boxes.

Which is why I thought the original question about God murdering his son was off target. Spirit exists and is available to us. God's grace aggressively pursues each of us. But the availability of Spirit does not absolve us from the responsibility of accessing it. God did not kill Jesus. Men, who trusted their priests, did. Similarly, God did not lay waste to this wonderful planet. We, who trusted our economists, did.

Am I a Christian? Only when I am not a Wiccan or a Buddhist or hanging in a Native American sweat lodge being cooked to a turn by some sadistic medicine man pouring water on the glowing stones with a heavy hand. Since no religion can wrap it all up nicely for me, which set of symbols and perceptual tricks I use depends largely on my mood and what I am trying to work on. I find it useful to shift between models. Ihave my own experiences, limited though they may be. I have no knowledge except that I know little and understand less.

I have come to the conclusion that to be overly bound by any religion is to come to the worship of the symbols it adopts, which are "false gods", and in agreement with other Holy Books the Bible advises strongly against such practice.

I have never thought of it that way.

I can add only three relevant personal facts, each expressions of agreement: that the older I get, the more I am convinced the true measure of a person is the willingness to admit the ultimate truth of "I don't know"; that the most honestly profound name for God I have ever encountered is the real translation of most North American Aboriginal names for the Deity: "Great Holy Mystery"; and that when I realized the infinite wisdom and genuine humility so expressed, it was the most pivotal spiritual discovery of my life.

"that the most honestly profound name for God I have ever encountered is the real translation of most North American Aboriginal names for the Deity: "Great Holy Mystery"; and that when I realized the infinite wisdom and genuine humility so expressed, it was the most pivotal spiritual discovery of my life."

Exactly what I was trying to get at, expressed more eloquently and with fewer words.

How do we know Jesus was son of Deity? Jesus was a smart guy who bitched about the fundies and Roman occupation and the deterioration of Jewish culture of the day. If he was god or son of god, wouldn't he be immortal, invulnerable, and such? Even with 1% of omnipotence, he could have done or been anything. Why limit all of god's "revlations" solely to one part of the world? Afterall, the Big 3 in religion are from the Middle East and all 3 claim to have god's word.

All three religions would have been there (because, at that time, they were one religion). The Jewish faith never believed Jesus, and Mohammed came later.

The god of war madness and riches.

He murdered his son after all?

"God had an abortion". That one would probably get you lynched.

Otherewise I would want a bumper sticker of the late pope john paul 2 (may he rest in peace) calling the chimp the anti christ.

murder all the rest of us. Of course. It all makes SOOOOO much sense now.

a post and leaving them there until they are dead could/would save anything. It makes no sense at all.
So what do we have now? A bunch of knee jerk droids that use that episode as an excuse to incite to war against all that believe differently than they.

A religion founded on violence breeds violence.

Jesus is the scape-goat for man-kind's sins. The lessons of the old testament are:

1) We all sin
2) no actions of our own can free us of sin
3) a scape-goat can take our sin away (until we sin again)

Jesus was our scape-goat for all time. He was a first-born sacrifice to God, in blood, for all time.


(BTW: this is a several sentence answer to a book that takes hundreds of pages to really understand)

If you really want to understand, you will need to do some old and new testament Bible studies (not the touchy-feely ones the freepers take) that deal with the historical, archaeological, and cultural issues of the Bible. See Dr. Paul Maier for a good start, or Tim Hetzner, or Ray Vanderlaan for some excellent video series.

...the whole thing seems pretty pointless.

I'd join in but you guys seem to have it covered.

Plus, everything would just get deleted because that seems to happen now wherever I go.

"Good morning, Onager."
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
post deleted

"I disagree with what you just said"
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
post deleted

"Did I say something wrong?"
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
post deleted

"I just found God! (and I even capitalized His name!)"
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
post deleted

"HEY! Why does tha"
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
post deleted


So, I won't post on this thread because I think I must have cooties.

oops, too late !

Jesus is all God.

Think of the trinity as you would think of your self,

example,

I can be a father to my child, a child to my father, and husband to my wife. I am a trinity.

God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (bride).

No different, really. It just depends on which view of him one is taking. I am different in my role as father, son, or husband, so the perception of me is different in each case, yet I am the same.

I have really enjoyed reading the replies.

Someone recently suggested to me that Jesus wasn't crucified to save us from sin, but he came as a mortal man to show us how to live and how to die. He died with love in his heart and no hatred or anger for his enemies. He lived to show us how to serve the poor, the sick, the homeless, and all who are less fortunate than us.

I do accept that Jesus was mortal. I have second thoughts about him being the only son of God, as we are told we are all children of God, inclusive of every living person.

If the concecpt of "God is love" is true, then it rather makes hash of the horrific stories in the Bible or any other "religious" writings that talk of anything but love.

which is why I think it's important to bear in mind that what's accepted as holy scripture is still the work of totally fallible human beings, with all their own biases and flaws. And their very human incapability, perhaps, of comprehending the extent of limitless love. I think God is probably a concept too great for our human minds to fully comprehend. Any box we make will be too small, you know? All we can do is accept the love, and strive to understand and emulate it as best we can.

NT!

Jesus resisted at first but then succumed. According to the bible he uttered, "Lord why have you forsaken me." while hanging on the cross. It seems to be a concept of sado-masochism and Mel Gibson sure played that to the extreme. It is a confusing tale because Jesus, supposedly came back to life and stayed around for several weeks until he somehow vanished and rose up to heaven. It is an interesting fairly tale, isn't it?

I don't believe most of what is in the bible as fact. The stories were conjured up by people that were trying to convey their own concepts of morality. Many of those stories are downright strange in their moral stances. The story of Jesus was recast mainly by Paul in order to gain acceptance of the concept to non-Jews. In my view, religon is about control of populations. Thus the Romans finally realized that Christianity was a pragmatic tool for them to control their domain.

And you do have to admit that death n' resurrection are far more beguiling than "this great guy named Jesus said we should love each other and stuff".

"Lord why have you forsaken me."

This does not mean God has forsaken Jesus. (Quite impossible, actually, as they are the same being).

In the time-period, people memorized the Torah. Women only memorized the Psalms. Jesus' quote is the beginning of a Psalm said to the women (the remaining followers of Jesus at the foot of the cross). When he said this, they would remember the rest of the Psalm, which described exactly the events that were taking place at that moment, and the psalm reassures that God would never forsake. So, when Jesus asks this, he is actually stating the obvious, to those who would know. (The Romans, like Christians or others who haven't studied the Bible, would no know this).

God chose to become human and experience human suffering and death as the ultimate demonstration of God's love for human-kind.

...ordered his people to slaughter the Amalekites down to the last cow, but save the virgin females for the men.

...ordered the heads of infants dashed against walls.

...drowned the whole world in a fit of pique.

...will fry anyone who doesn't kiss his ass in a lake of fire for eternity.

"God's love for human-kind." Right.

This would be the God who tried to explain love to a group of people who got the message twisted. Thus Jesus.

If you want to read the bible literally, go to it, and you'll find yourself going just where you seem to want to go in your post.

If you want to realize that it's but a human attempt to explain interaction with God, then you start to see things differently.

Allegory, myth, and lots of human fallibility.

Are you trying to tell me the entire Old Testament is myth and allegory? You'd better check with some of your co-religionists, who are constantly crowing about the "historical accuracy" of the Bible. Not all of them are goofy Fundie literalists, either. Look thru this forum and you'll find plenty on DU.

Believers not only want things both ways, they want them EVERY damn way. They want the Bible to be taken literally when that suits their purposes. But then when the Bible comes up with some obviously wrong howler (rabbits chewing their cuds, the sun circling the Earth), they insist that it's only "allegory and myth."

IMO, most of the Old Testament is nothing but one long wail against religious tolerance. Not surprising, since it was mainly written by priests who desperately wanted to maintain their rich and undeserved position of prominence in society.

It's obvious you wish to believe what you wish, so I won't try to change that.

I'm also not going to defend myself or my beliefs.

(Dag, that Obi-Wan was clever!)

Re: Amelekites: (short answer) God told his people to put to the ban any indigenous peoples. He knew that to not do so, would invite sin and destruction. The people and cultures of the time worshipped Baal, Chemosh, et al. They were sacrificers of humans, orgyisitc revelers in their religion, etc. God wanted his people to stand apart and be seen as different...something to aspire to...something to attract others back to God (or at least keep the existing worshippers doing the right thing). The surrounding people were already lost to God, therefore their sould were already condemed, (although, there is a possible out for them, as Jesus died for all sins for all time, even though these souls were trapped in Sheol, they could have been released to Heaven) therefore killing them now would make no long-term difference (harsh..but true). Not the way God would prefer it, but he knew (and was proven correct) that if they allowed the others to stay around, they would corrupt His people.

Drowning: Not in a fit of pique. His entire free-willed creation on Earth had turned against him. He was, in fact, quite willing to give man-kind, yet, another chance.

Fry: God doesnt condem anyone to eternal death (or frying, if you like that later imagery). God offers all a chance to be with him. Men with free-will choose their own path. They can Choose life...or death... God...or Sin.

For most of its participants, human life is horrible. It was even more horrible in the police state of Judea 2000 years ago.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Telling others that homosexuality is a sin tends to piss me off but, then again, that's just your opinion and I need not agree.

to experience life. To see what it feels like to be human, to have all the flaws of humans, the emotions, the ups and the downs. God showed his love to us by sacrificing his son, something he has asked his faithful to do to prove their love to him. This is the ultimate Sacrifice to show love. I know I could not do that with my child....

That he has limits and must work within some unknown system of rules. He couldn't have just saved humanity without human sacrifice. It had to be his son for some unknown reason. he had to have his son murdered in gruesome fashion because that was the only way to save humanity. I still dont get it.

... who didn't like all the sensible stuff that his son was saying?

The old God was into fear, damnation, violence and worship (on the whole).
His son was into peace, love, tolerance and friendship (on the whole).

Could be cause for family disputes?

n/t

1. God cast out satan for rebelling, and said he would punish him eternally.

2. God says he is consistent. Satan knew this and mislead man.

3. God is in a bind, so he finds an out - he never said who had to be punushed, so he came here, became man, and took it for us - thus bruising the ego of satan (crushing the head of satan).