to not understand why Christians think Jesus died for our sins?

[switcheroooo]

If Jesus died for everyone's sins, does that mean people are not accountable for their actions? You can kill people, steal and lie but have a protected status because Jesus died for your sins.

How does this work? Why are people not responsible for their own sins? Where is the justice?

I'm an atheist with some close friends who are committed Christians and science graduates ( PhD in a couple of cases). Their answer to that question is that they do believe evolution is fact, and that the Garden of Eden (Old Testament) is essentially a metaphor. They believe that God, being omnipotent and omniscient, deliberately created the universe, in such a way that it would evolve as it has. They also see a very distinct difference between the Old Testament and the New.
Some other Christians believe God created the world as a done-deal a few of thousand years ago, and any evidence to the contrary is planted there, by God, to test their faith.
Christianity is very broad. Most Christians I know think that you need to study and interpret the bible to understand it, rather than just memorise it and accept 100% of it literally. What conclusions to draw from that study has always been debated; indeed there was a huge internal debate to decide what to include in the bible in the first place.

I believe in God. But I don't know what God is. All organised religions IMHO are people throughout history trying to make sense of this feeling about "there must be something more" but clearly as soon as an organised religion starts up, as soon as there's any power to be had, it gets twisted and goes wrong. Pre Darwin, when the Bible was the only offered explanation for the history of the universe, all the illogical stuffwas easier to accept, although people have always doubted - the 17th century thinker Thomas Hobbes was said by his friend John Aubrey to have been an atheist, but the fear of being persecuted/executed/having his books burned kept him quiet. What keeps me culturally a Christian is that when I read the words of Jesus they are for all time, although hard to live up to. It is actually nearly impossible to be a "good" Christian we can only keep trying. Happy Easter and enjoy your eggs, the most important rule is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

How is it insulting to ask questions? And surely this is exactly the time of year that people will ask about these things, with it being at the forefront of people’s minds? Perhaps you should try to engage with the discussion instead of getting all outraged. And perhaps it should be a refreshing change to see someone ask questions relating to the significance of the death of Jesus (pretty much central to Christian belief) instead of the usual complaints about Cadbury’s not being the same anymore and parents in law not buying organic chocolate for darling Cuthbert.

It's a really interesting topic but a bit mean spirited to bring up on Easter Sunday 🤷‍♀️

Yes and OP asks “where is the justice?”
Indeed, I’d like to know where is the justice for a child who was forced to marry at 6 and raped at 9.
Let’s have that conversation…

A powerful knowing God puts a sneaky snake in the garden and tempts Eve. Then she eats an apple and God asks where are you! As if a knowing all powerful God doesn’t know. The snake tells Eve you’ll now become like one of us! Plural by the way, then God gets angry, he is slow to anger but is very angry in many places in the OT, almost like different entity to Jesus but that’s another story, and we are punished forever. . And if we don’t believe Jesus died on a cross for us we are doomed, so all the lovely people who have done good are doomed just because they seriously don’t believe this true, the one who declares Jesus is lord in his death bed gets to heaven even if he raped and murdered all his life. Make it make sense. Saying that there are beautiful teachings of spiritual nature that Jesus taught, he was a mystic for sure. And also in many ancient texts have same messages, , and different beliefs throughout he ages.

Go online to do research. Your post looks like you are trying to get into a religion argument…
Try this …. Is it true that Islam only religion that promotes killing non-believers?

No one goes to hell - it’s just a religious concept to try and force people into behaving a certain way.

Tbf I criticise all religions. It’s not exclusive to Christianity.

We probably should accept that everyone is on different paths and in different places in their life journey. 10 years ago I didn’t care about religion, and now my journey has led me to a very spiritual place. Everyone is different and it’s fine, no need to fight 🤷

I think the whole problem comes when people look for logical consistency in religious texts.

I do not mean that in a derogatory way toward those texts.

i see them as illustrations and metaphors to communicate concepts, and they are often shared.

Taking Easter, it’s about understanding the circle of life, it’s about fertility, renewal and birth and rebirth (hence all the rabbits and eggs) from a Christian precept this is understood through the washing away of Sins through death and a rebirth to move
forward that is purified. The act of an ending brings a new beginning and a path forward.

other religions, including polytheistic ones have similar festivals for this concept, just as Christmas, Diwali and Eid are all about light through the dark.

Forget the details, think about the concepts and not only does the story used to communicate them not matter, it also illustrates many shared thoughts we
could unify over, rather than fight.

Religion is a mechanism for understanding life and much of the messages in all of them, especially the Abrahamic ones, are the same. Its the interpretation and application of these religions by people looking to use them to gain their own authority that’s the issue, not the religions or their concepts themselves.

Absolutely. That’s adult morality. Behave with justice and concern, and try to make the world a better place, without the carrot and stick of eternal bliss/damnation.

I agree - I do the right thing because I’m a good person and not because a religious belief say what I should and shouldn’t do.

Most of these questions DO have good answers, but you would need to look outside mumsnet or random google searches to find good answers. You also need to read the answers given without being anachronistic; if you start reading Thomist theology without appreciating the cultural and intellectual milieux in which those answers were written and assume that every word translated means identically what you think it means today, you’ll probably be very unimpressed.

In short, the mysteries of evil, freedom, etc are actually deep theological subjects that have millions of pages written about them. Dismissing them with half baked theories “you came up with yourself” is like someone dismissing evolution because they read the Big British Book of Birds. It’s an opinion that is essentially worthless.

But many religious people don't believe that their religion is some metaphorical pondering on the meaning of life. They posit that the stories in the Bible are true. That, 2000 years ago, a human man, who was also in some sense both God and the son of God, was murdered but then came back to life.

That's preposterous.

I was brought up a Catholic (now athiest) and not a lot made any sense to me. What happened to all the people who lived and died before Jesus?

Huge part of being a Christian (in fact, the core of it) is BELIEVING and accepting that Jesus, the Son of God, died for our sins, and was resurrected later. Without any questions. This is the nature of faith, and if you truly believe, you are a Christian.

Questioning and debating it making you a non-believer. Questioning it on Easter, a holy celebration, is highly inappropriate, but, I guess,, as a non-believer you can do whatever you want!

The TL;DR is that an omnipotent god was unable to change the rules of the universe, so had to get his lad to fix the mess.

When you put it like that, it doesn't sound quite so inspiring.

Basically Jesus’s death and resurrection is symbolic (on a macro level ) of the triumph of life over death, good over evil and light over darkness. If you read the Biblical accounts there’s a lot of symbolism in there. There’s a lot of complex theological discussion about what this actually means but it doesn’t mean that people are not responsible for their actions. I don’t think a mumsnet AIBU thread is the place to write an essay on it. Of course some Christians read the Bible a lot more literally than others.

PS I don’t think asking questions is mocking Christianity and OP wasn’t disrespectful. Answers that talk about Sky Fairies and over simplify faith are disrespectful, honest debate isn’t.

My understanding is that it means no sin is a barrier to heaven as long as there is true repentance.

Otherwise some sins would condemn a person to Hell for eternity. It all gets a bit complicated: which sins are deserving of an eternity of punishment? What about context? Can you cancel out sins with good deeds?

Which is why for centuries Catholics had the concept of purgatory, which doesn't have a biblical origin and the Vatican removed it from Catholic dogma some years ago.

Of course, the concept of Hell Christians have had since medieval times also doesn't have a biblical basis, which throws a different light on the concept of dying for our sins.

Theological interpretations are immense, varied and complicated - there's been 2000 years of people trying to apply simple messages to all sorts of different situations and the powerful throughout history have used them for their own ends, too.

To those taking the opportunity to deride Christianity...My own view is that it doesn't really matter if God exists, if Jesus was his son who performed miracles, died for our sins and rose from the dead...

Historians are fairly unanimous that a man called Jesus once existed, lived in the middle East, was a religious teacher who preached a simple message: be kind to each other, share - don't hoard - resources.

The world would undoubtedly be a better place if we managed this.

There’s a book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations” and I think similar conclusions could be drawn about IQ and varieties of religion.

Some are absolute non-sensical, derivative guff and some are Christianity.

The bits of the Bible most likely to be true are those which were written contemporaneously and with corroborative evidence from other, objective sources. Anything else is a matter of whether you choose to believe it. Much is blatantly untrue and implausible.

I do find it a bit of a sticking point in trying to understand Christianity. If you’re going to atone for everyone’s sins by suffering (a concept I’d question anyway), it seems quite a small amount of suffering, for a divine being? Not suggesting crucifixion is anything less than horrible torture, but many humans have suffered far more/worse. So I never understood how it saves everyone, other than it’s just how it is and it doesn’t have to make sense - which is the essence of faith, as many believers have said.

I also feel uncomfortable about a whole religion being centred around an image of torture and a torture implement. I wish religions were more cheery and positive and less about suffering and punishment and prohibiting things.

Having said that, I know several Christians who really do live by an ethos of kindness, forgiveness and genuinely considering others and I respect that their beliefs are important to them and they are equally respectful of mine, so no need to argue about it.

Questioning and debating it making you a non-believer.

I’ve known many Christians to talk about doubt and questioning as an important part of their journey, and there are loads of writings about it.