Why did Jesus come to earth, run around for 30 odd years, and then suffer and die on the cross? Some say he was a controversial teacher, and his eventual death was the product of what he was doing. He severly pissed off the jewish authorities, and they tried to get rid of him and his following by sending him to be crucified. Christians generally acknowledge that point, but argue that there was something more than just that going on. Often this something more is expressed in analogies, which makes it easier to understand.
I like analogies. They’re a good way to describe things. We should never think of them as the final truth, but instead think of them as descriptions of the truth. They are like photographs, two dimensional images that capture some of the truth of a three dimensional object. You can have many different angles and lightings, and they each capture part of the truth of the object, and so we ought to look at these different angles, to get a bigger sense of the truth. So you may want to treat this post as a slightly different angle to normal, hopefully revealing some more truth.
One of the big analogies out there is that of a legal system. The big name for it is ‘penal substitution‘. Basically the idea is that there is a massive crime that people have committed, and that there needs to be a punishment. Jesus steps in and volunteers to take the punishment, and so God sends him to earth, arranges for him to have a pretty nasty death, and thus the punishment has been delievered. This analogy has a few holes, for example, why would God create the need for punishment, why can’t he just write it off the punishment, and forgive. Another hole is that the death and his life seem to be seperate things - why does he bother coming to earth in human form, teaching all us this stuff, when the big thing is him dying? There seems to be a divorce between his life, and his death. But like I say, analogies are but descriptions of the truth.
Today, another analogy crossed my mind. I was reading M. Scott Peck’s ‘People of the lie‘, where Peck talks about evil. He talks about treating evil, and as is the case with any therapy, a therapist must put a lot of time and energy into the therapy. In a sense the therapist has to suffer with the client. It is emotionally draining, and potentially quite painful. In my own work, I have felt this drain when dealing with people in difficult situations. And there are good reasons for this drain.
To really help someone, the first step is to understand them, you need to enter their world, and that’s not easy. First of all you have to put aside your own preconcieved ideas and get inside their head, which can be quite difficult. Once you get there, you realize just how tough their world is, and in a way, you even experience it for yourself, which is quite draining. Once this connection is established, a lot of good can be achieved. Maybe that’s part of what Jesus does for humanity?
So Jesus enters out world, coming in to help us deal with our problems, suffering with us. Our sin is not something that needs to be punished, it’s a sickness that needs to be cured. People with sin are not to hated, rejected, judged, but instead, they ought to be loved, to be pitied, and hopefully, to be helped. And hell is not something that people are sent to, but it’s rather where people end up, being trapped in the webs of their own self-deception. Jesus came and lived with people, in a sense, being a therapist, suffering alongside the people of his day, and suffering alongside humanity, enduring our problems in order to help us overcome them.
The problem with the analogy is it’s not so clear why Jesus died. Surely he could have just continued with his teachings / therapising until he was old, and then ascended? Not sure. Perhaps while he was dead there was some form of supernatural therapy, where he helped people who were dead, or helped spirits/ spirits. Or perhaps to really connect with humanity he needed to become fully immersed in human suffering, and so had to know what it’s like to die. Or maybe it was as I mentioned before, the natural consequence of his teachings. I don’t know. No analogy is perfect anyway. But I really like the idea of Jesus suffering alongside us in order to heal us, and I think the analogy of the therapist expresses that really well.
So I think the photograph of God as a therapist looks a better than the photograph of God as a judge and victim. I am conscious that it makes a lot of sense to me as I’ve had experiences of suffering to enter into someone’s world, and done a lot of thinking about such things, so my photo might not have such an appeal to everyone. But feel free to take a copy, and put it in your scrapbook :).
Disclaimer: I’m only half way through ‘people of the lie’, and now that I’ve written this, I’ve a funny feeling M Scott Peck is probably going to argue something like this in the second half of the book. I’ll keep you posted.
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October 24, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Scott
Hi Nathan,
Interesting comments. Though isn’t it reasonable to think that if Jesus did come to earth as God’s climactic solution to human sinfulness, that he would have also communicated the reason for this also? - rather than leaving us to speculate as to why?
I think this is reasonable, given the nature of God as Lord over his world (i.e. he has the ability to communicate clearly to us, his created beings), and given the central place this event has in God’s plan for his world. In the history of God’s dealings with humanity, his salvific acts have always been accompanied by explanation and interpretation.
Why do you assume that God would leave us to speculate in this way?
All the best,
S
October 24, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Nato
Um, maybe a better question would be, ‘does God leave us to speculate?’ Sure, it would be entirely reasonable, given what you’ve said, to think that God wouldn’t leave us to speculate. But what matters is what is, not what we want things to be.
And my answer is yes, he has given us a lot of room to speculate. It’s pretty biblical that God doesn’t reveal everything (e.g. Deut 29:29) to us. One potential reason for this is that God is a bit smarter than humans (e.g. 1 Cor 1:25). The other things is that God wouldn’t need to communicate everything about his plan to us, just the bits that involve us.
We need to bear in mind that the period of revelation was 2000 years ago, in a different language, to a different culture, and the accounts were written a few years later. So, making the assumption that God was 100% clear back then (which is dubious, given the accounts we read about how the disciples had a lot of difficulty understanding what Jesus was on about), we still need to do a considerable amount of work to piece it back together, and translate it into what is relevant to us, in our language, in our culture.
Why hasn’t God made things more obvious? I suspect it’s something to do with leaving us to work stuff out for ourselves - we need to discover him for ourselves.
One implication I take from this is that God isn’t going to be incredibly pissed off if we happen to come up with something that isn’t 100% correct. If he cared about us having idea that are 100% correct, he’d communicated these ideas pretty clearly.
October 24, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Nato
wow, that was a long answer… sorry :S
October 24, 2008 at 6:08 pm
aeonsim
I certainly agree that one part of it is the whole experience thing.
To be able to say “I have lived as you do, I have lived with you, I have suffered as you do, I have been hungry and full, happy and sad, and I have been born as you are and I have died as you do”. Has a lot more impact and authority than saying “I know what it’s like, I’ve observed you and thought about it”!
We strongly distinguish between knowledge gained from experience vs knowledge determined by intellectual means.
Also though I think that humans pay more attention to things that people passionately believe. And one of the strongest proofs of believe that a human can show is to be prepared to die for those beliefs and teachings.
To be prepared to die and to actually do so for ones beliefs tends to elevate such beliefs above most others and makes others remember them much more strongly.
October 25, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Scott
Hi Nathan,
That’s true - God doesn’t reveal everything about his plans and purposes. You’re right to point that out. Deuteronomy makes that pretty clear, while also affirming that God does speak clearly in the areas that he does reveal, so that those things may ‘belong to us’, and be passed on to the next generation. He speaks clearly enough for us to obey and follow him.
But the message of the cross is not an area of speculation, but a mystery which has been revealed by the Spirit, and can only be accepted by the Spirit. At the beginning of 1 Corinthians, the reason the message of the cross is rejected and misunderstood by ‘Jews’ and ‘Greeks’, isn’t because that message is unclear or unexplained, but because it is offensive. The cross is a clear, but foolish message, which people reject - because through it God chooses to humble them in their pretentions to ‘wisdom’. Paul is clear about what the cross means - that we’ve been given life in Christ Jesus, through union with him who is ‘our wisdom, holiness, and redemption’ (1:30). It’s a message which humbles us, because salvation is acheieved through the power of God, completely apart from us. Later he speaks of how Christ defeated death, by dying for sin, and rising to new life (Ch15), and that by union with him we share in that life. Christ has forgiven our sin by dealing with the judgement of God in the cross (Col 2:13-15).
If anything, 1 Corinthians 2 should teach us that God’s gospel is proclaimed and recieved by the revelation of the Spirit, not by human speculation/wisdom. That’s part of the offensive and humbling thing about the gospel. We don’t nut it out, we recieve it by the Spirit’s witness, offensive though it seems to the natural man. When you argue above about whether it is reasonable that God should hold humans accountable for their sin, rather than ‘just forgiving’, is this not the ‘human wisdom’ that Paul is warning against? I’m not saying that the gospel is irrational, nor that it can be completely comprehended. But if our primary stance is one of autonomous speculative reasoning, rather than humble willingness to learn from the Spirit’s witness in scripture, are we not in danger of placing our wisdom above God’s wisdom?
I agree that the historical/cultural distance between us and scripture means we need to be careful in our reading. But this doesn’t render God’s Word unclear. Jesus’ disciples misunderstood his teaching/actions only until he had been resurrected and they were led by the Spirit to understand what the Scriptures had pointed to all along (Luke 24:25-27 - You could argue that the distance between the disciples and the OT was just as great as between the NT and us). They were then comissioned to proclaim forgiveness of sins to all nations.
Even if there are interpretative hurdles to overcome, I don’t think this puts us in the position of an unclear scripture, and a need to replace the testimony of the Spirit with human wisdom.
Ironically enough, if we listen to the Spirit’s witness in scripture, we do actually find that Jesus’ death was an identification with human suffering, as you suggest. In Hebrews 2 (vs14-18), Jesus is the one who shares our humanity and suffers with us, firstly so that through his death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, and secondly, so that by being made like us, he might be able to identify with us and represent us to God.
Does it not glorify God much more when we listen to the witness of the Spirit rather than exalting our own wisdom? I can know the wonderful news that Jesus came and suffered with humanity in order to be sympathetic with my condition and represent me to God, not on the shakey grounds of my own speculation, but through the sure testimony of God in his Word! In my mind, this leads to greater praise to God, and greater joy, thanksgiving, and obedience in his people.
Humbly (I hope!),
Scott
October 27, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Nato
Aeonsim, yeah, definitely.
Another thing I’d add to the mix is the difference between sympathy and empathy. Both can involve experience, but empathy is better. Sympathy is where you have experienced something, and so assume that what people are experiencing is the same as you experienced. Whereas empathy is not assuming, and instead, listening, and being with the person, you may have experienced something similar, but you don’t need to. So if you have knowledge gained by experience, it doesn’t always help, because it may be tempting to assume that it is for others as it is for you. On the other hand, someone with empathy may have experienced a similar thing, but the important thing is that they pyschologically / metaphorically experience it.
And God has empathy.
Scott, have been thinking how I may answer that without writing a thesis. Basically, I’ve cut it down to one paragraph
I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t hold to your basic assumption, that we should take the bible as inspired. I perceive the bible to be important, but I make use of my human faculties, and hold ‘human wisdom’ to be important. Ultimately all we know is through human experience, and so we have to use our minds to come to any conclusion. You have come to one conclusion, and I have come to a different conclusion, but we have both used our minds. If we cannot use our minds, we cannot know anything. And obviously there is more to it than that, but I think that’s probably the most fundamental difference in our arguments.
October 27, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Scott
Hi Nathan,
I don’t think the issue is about whether we use our minds or don’t use our minds. Of course I think we should use our minds in understanding God’s truth.
The issue is whether the assumption that independant human reasoning is definitive in our understanding of the Christian faith is compatible with that same faith. Is it compatible with the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, their attitude to the scriptures, and the very nature of the gospel as an authoritative word of grace to humans enslaved to sin, who have no hope of discovering the truth about God apart from his gracious self-revelation? I’m suggesting there is a fundamental contradiction in your position, and that the way of discovering spiritual truth taught in 1 Corinthians 2 is inherent in Christianity itself if its consistency is to be maintained.
But that’s another discussion altogether I guess!
Peace,
Scott
November 3, 2008 at 8:51 am
Andrew
I don’t see how Scott can claim the bible is “clear” on this matter when so many Christians throughout history have been convinced the bible taught so many different views of the atonement, and similarly so many scholars in the present day are convinced it teaches so many different things.
In Christian history we have: Moral Exemplar, Ransom from Satan, Christus Victor, Recapitulation / Theosis, Satisfaction, Penal Substitution, Governmental etc. From modern academic scholars on Paul we have: E.P. Sanders - mystical spiritual participation in Christ; NT Wright - “historicized” Penal Substitution; Chris VanLandingham - Christus Victor and Moral Exemplar; David Brondos - Narrative moral transformation, Pilch and Malina - Satisfaction. Stephen Finlan - Theosis.
When so many different Christians, and so many modern scholars can study the same writings and come to such fundamentally different views, I have to conclude that “clear” is the one thing that Paul’s writings / the bible isn’t. While I would say the correct interpretation is clear to me, that’s only because I have spent about many years studying the subject, not because I think the text itself is particularly clear in general.
November 4, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Scott
There’s a fallacy in saying, - different views exist, therefore the Bible is unclear. There may be other reasons for the multiplicity of views. One could just as easily say this about any issue, including the existence of God. But perhaps you would even question the knowability of this proposition?
And it seems contradictory to me to say that modern academic scholars have differing views because of the Bible’s lack of clarity, and then to turn around and claim that you happen to have come across the correct view.
November 7, 2008 at 9:06 am
Andrew
Scott’s post made me think a bit about the concept of something being ‘clear’… which seems to be to be quite an interesting idea.
On the one had a person can talk about their own personal view of whether a text is clear to them (eg “it’s clear to me”).
But on the other hand, we often speak of clarity as a property of the text itself. In saying “the text is clear” we often don’t just mean that we personally find it clear, we mean we think that the text itself is clear and that everyone else should see its meaning clearly. This would seem to treat clarity as if it were an objective property like weight, length etc, which it obviously isn’t. But it seems, neither is it an entirely subjective property - in normal usage, a text could be ‘clear’ and yet a particular individual might ‘wrongly’ think it was not.
Thinking about what makes us say that a text is clear or unclear leads me to believe that it is a aggregate value of all subjective views. ie if everyone agrees on what it means, and thinks it is clear, then it is. Equally if everyone disagrees on what it means, and doesn’t think it is clear, then it isn’t. The degree to which a text is clear seems to depend on an aggregate of the extent to which interpreters have agreed on its meaning and the extent to which they thought it was clear. Possibly also, the degree to which they had studied the text would also need to be taken into account by the aggregation function, and also I suppose their degree of comprehension of the language/culture in which it was written would need to be assessed. Possibly Nathan can supply us with some graphs…
Given such a definition of the ‘objective’ clarity of a text, it seems to follow that if lots of people who have studied the text have come to lots of different views about its meaning then the text itself is not clear. Equally, particular individuals might see it as being clear-to-them. Obviously the existence of God is not clear to most people and hence lacks objective clarity, yet some people’s experiences or mindsets make the existence of God clear-to-them.
December 5, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Matt
Ah, but that also depends on whether or not you’ve come across people who disagree with your interpretation. If you only ever talk to the small group of people who share your opinion, it will be entirely ‘clear’ to you.