Why did God need Jesus to be killed?

[Machadaynu]

Not much to add to the title I suppose.

It's just never made sense to me that an omnipotent God would need to do anything he didn't want to, therefore he must have wanted to have Jesus killed.

He could have forgiven us without him being killed - or he isn't omnipotent.

He could have made a world that remained without sin, rather than letting Satan mess this one up in the first week - or he isn't omnipoitent

He could have invented another way of making a symbolic gesture that didn't involve murdering his son - maybe he could have made the earth spin backwards or something to signify a new start.

I just don't understand God thinking "well, I don't need to murder my son, but I think I will anyway because that will show people how loving I am"

So why did he claim to need to have Jesus killed?

I feel DandyDan just wants to hold onto something she finds "makes her life meaningful" (The most telling part of her post I think) I don't think we can blame her for that - we're all looking for some meaning. That's all part of life's great adventure

I just don't believe it as literally as I did in my yoof. Your spiritual path may take you on a similar journey if you're open to that ...

Where do I state that I don't "understand fully"? No human being understands "fully" anything at all - none of us. Or do you mean that Jesus etc has faith in something (God) they don't understand fully? Who can understand God? No-one. Only Jesus who was fully human and fully divine - who revealed God in his essence, and therefore knew God. Humanly did he know the solid fact of the resurrection as circumstances took him to the cross? - no, I don't believe he did. He had a choice to reject the path he was taking at any point, but once he was in the hands of the authorities he had no "physical" choice, only his responses to what was happening to him were left to him and he exercised those to the end, trusting in God until the end.

And who said anyone responding here was enthusiastic? - myself, I am fed up of these threads but if people are asking, sometimes, but not always, I will give my point of view (I didn't in the Secularism thread, for example). I don't expect anything I write to be accepted as "truth" at face value - it is my opinion and understanding of my faith, and usually when I write, I write with the experience of knowing that my understanding is similar to many other Christians that I know of and have read of. That's all.

I do not believe in God because belief in God makes my life meaningful. Please do not use a patronising tone about other's beliefs and infer something that you do not know. And read the thread (hijacked yet again by non-believers) about "Do you ever get fed up of other people's views on your religion?"

You asked a question, I was polite enough to join the conversation, hoping to be of some help. Now you presume to actually state your opinion that my belief exists in order to make my life meaningful - in which case this thread is no longer about your query but about being critical of believers' individual expressions of their faith.

DandyDan my apologies. As you have freely joined in this thread and offer your input, I'd assumed you had done so with a least a modicum of enthusiasm. I can see now that I was wrong.

You ask when you said you don't understand fully - that, again, was slightly presumptive and I apologise.

What you actually said was "I can only begin to give you elements of the things I understand about Jesus" which implies you don't think you understand everything fully, but doesn't actually state that. However, in your more recent post you say "No human being understands "fully" anything at all - none of us." which does rather suggest that my inference was correct.

You seem to be saying that you think God abandoned Jesus as he was handed over to the Romans, and from that point he was fully human?

Aware that Juggling stated the opinion, not Machadaynu who is the OP.

Well, no human being does understand everything fully - on any subject.

Thank you for your apologies.

When I give you "elements of the things I understand" - yes, it means I don't understand everything - who does? But mostly it means I haven't got time to write it all down in a way that is clear to both me and you.

No, God never abandoned Jesus. He was fully human all along.

So if you said you don't understand everything, and mean it, why get indignant that I repeated it?

The thread has not been hijacked by non-believers, it's open to all.
I was simply sharing what I've found on my own life and spiritual journey.
Non-believers and doubters are not the only ones to be patronising ...
When I quoted you it wasn't intended to be patronising however, it was a simple quotation.

If we could "understand it fully" it wouldn't be faith, it would be science. It might be nice if it was completely understandable, but it isn't. People believe in spite of the fact that they cannot entriely explain or understand it.

Part of it is that people use "believe" to mean two different things, depending on what they are talking about. I "believe in God", despite having only a partial understanding of how to define and categorise that God. But I "believe in" gravity, in the full knowledge that it has been studied and defined and can be proved to have certain un-arguable properties. The two things are just different.

I've sort of lost track of what the question is now tbh, RL got in the way for a bit....

Jesus being fully God and fully human has never really made sense to me in practical terms - as a "statement of theology" it was more intended to refute some of the early church heresies which either stated that Jesus was fully human (nice bloke, good teacher, but no different from the rest of us) or fully God (never really tempted by sin, never even capable of sin, couldn't really feel the same way about things as humans do). So "fully God and fully human" was intended to argue against both of those, rather than explaining how he could be both.

Why should a thread not have "unbelievers" who want to discuss on it? You could create a hidden forum if you liked :)

AMumInScotland that's interesting about the early church heresies.

However, knowing how the idea came about doesn't explain how the idea can make sense, or answer the complaints of those early heretics. They seem to have had a point, don't they?

All the sophisticated explanations afterwards are well and good, but they don't necessarily describe the truth, or help us to get there.

So, not really logically rigorous then MumInScotland ?

• but thank you, some helpful thoughts.

< tries but fails not to be patronising >

I liked the reference to traditions of sacrificing something to appease the Gods. The Old Testament seems to have many sacrifice stories. And early Christianity was only a sect of Judaism. So all makes a lot of sense.

Juggling I don't think the whole premise of a God or gods can ever be entriely logically rigorous. I try to be logical about everything that follows on from that starting point, bu tin all honesty I don't spend my time worrying about these tihngs, nor do most believers I imagine, it's just not high up the priority list.

Machadaynu the tricky thing is the idea that there is a single truth and that it's findable... I believe that Jesus was the incarnation of God in a way which no-one else has been. And therefeore was God. But since God doesn't normally walk around down here, Jesus was also, in important ways, human. How he can be "fully" both I don't see, because there must be inconsistencies between what "God" is/does/feels and what a human is/does/feels. But he was in important ways both rather than one or the other. In specific circumstances, maybe one would be more obvious than the other.

The thread that was 'hijacked' (in part, not in whole) was the "Do you ever get fed up of other people's views on your religion?" - not this thread. That thread was started by a person of faith asking other people of faith a question. Other people can comment of course - comment is free - but the point of the thread quickly can become diverted from its original intent (I'd say in this case the thread was an appeal for other's experiences which might have been helpful to those concerned).

Juggling - your quoting of my phrase wasn't patronising - but stating that the "most meaningful bit" of my comment implied something about my faith, was patronising, as is the phrase "Just want to hold onto something" as an explanation for my faith. "I don't think we can blame her" is a patronising overview of my supposed need for faith. I don't have a "need" for faith.

And I am not indignant about the repetition about "fully understand" - what we understand by that phrase might be different, as AMiS suggests.

Thank you, AMiS, for your comments. I agree about the fully human/divine aspect.

" I was that I was, am that I am, and will be that I will be."

Truisms make you feel better?

I can understand that nobody can prove God exists, that much is obvious. What I don't understand is that people can base their understanding of life around, er, something that they don't understand.

Well, I have a need for meaning, I think we all do. I also value being part of a faith community (Quakers) so I'd understand anyone who did feel they had a need for faith.

The patronising thing is interesting .... I don't think I have been particularly or generally tend to be patronising. I am fairly respectful of other viewpoints.

And I think you mis-quoted me slightly DandyDan - or took things out of context (for the record)

I don't think there's been much wrong with the tone or intention of any posts on this thread. Just a bit of robust discussion.

HotSlate I think most people of faith either base their understanding on a long history of what people have believed and done before them (where religion is as much a cultural thing as about actual belief) or else because they feel that it is right, rather than needing to fully understand everything about it.

AMumInScotland - yes I think you're right. And that's fine, except where others are made to feel wrong and are punished / disadvantaged for not believing (not meaning you personally, just 'the establishment'). Things are changing, but attitudes are still entrenched in certain places. Anyway, that's another debate!

The earliest translatable epithet for God is there to suggest God is/was not a "being" as was being suggested earlier in the thread but something eternal and indescribable.

Juggling - you may have had no intention to 'patronise' - and I will accept that - but you did formulate a public opinion about why you thought I believed in God - which was both presumptive and wrong - on very little grounds.

HotSlate yes, it's fine as long as it's just about your own personal choices, but when you start to make laws etc on the basis of a faith it has to be a lot more than either "we've always done it this way" or "it feels right to me", which are ok for my own decisions but harder to apply generally.

Which "earliest translatable epithet" are you referring to?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_am_that_I_am

A 'being' is something that has life and exists.

In what sense is God not a 'being' to you, DandyDan?

I don't know why you object to it so much really. It seems a prefectly valid description to me.