Blaming Jesus for Jehovah: Rethinking the Righteousness of Christianity by Price Robert M

Author:Price, Robert M. [Price, Robert M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tellectual Press
Published: 2016-02-09T16:00:00+00:00

It’s Who You Know

About that uncontacted Amazonian tribesman

On and on it goes. We have to ask why belief in God’s plan of salvation would be necessary at all. If God, through Christ’s death, has saved you by blotting out your sins, why do you have to know about it? Consider the logic of “Jesus died for the sins of mankind.” What, didn’t it work?

If the atonement doesn’t work until and unless you acknowledge it in faith, then you’d have to say Jesus merely made it possible to be saved. Like Jonas Salk, he would seem to be the inventor of a vaccine, but you’d have to stand in line to get your sugar cube with the medicine in it. If you don’t, you’re still not “saved” from getting Polio.

That somehow seems inadequate, given all the Christian talk about Jesus simply “saving” us. Did he just make it possible for us to save ourselves? If Jesus saved us by his sacrifice, why would we be required to believe in it, and to affirm the truth of it? Many people have been rescued by some hidden benefactor without ever being aware of it.

You have probably heard devout Christians speculate over the ultimate fate of foreign people who dwell far beyond the reach of missionaries. They live and die without ever knowing about Jesus and the gospel of salvation. No one can bring himself to believe that these poor souls are automatically consigned to hell (though missionary fundraising rhetoric sometimes implies it). Sometimes the puzzled pious speculate that perhaps God saves or damns these heathens depending upon how well they live up to “the light they have.” Did they strive to obey their consciences? God knows their hearts.

But in that case, shouldn’t Christian missionaries just stay home? Are they doing the heathen any favors by setting new hurdles in their path? As soon as they blaze a trail through the jungle and tell “the good news,” the natives are put in a much tighter spot, now being required to accept alien, improbable beliefs about unverifiable “realities.” Weren’t they better off before?

The same question comes up with the righteous people of the Old Testament. Even if they expected the eventual advent of a messianic king to restore the fortunes of Israel, there is just no way they could have looked forward to a divine Savior, an incarnation of God, who would sacrifice himself to expiate the sins of the world. That is Christian dogma pure and simple, so it cannot predate the Christian religion. And yet certainly the Old Testament heroes of the faith cannot have been sent to Gehenna for lack of clairvoyant knowledge of the Christian faith. Nobody thinks they were.

But, once again, if it was good enough for them to be faithful to what (little) they knew of God, why muddy the water by introducing a whole checklist of new beliefs that will be required for salvation from now on? Would such new doctrines be easy to accept? Look at the overwhelmingly negative reaction of Jews, ancient and modern, to Christian beliefs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.