Why did Jesus die?

Here is a post I made on the Cafe and Kaos Church blog. You can follow the subsequent discussion in the CafeChurch Forum.

With Lent (the forty days before Easter, not including Sundays) getting under way yesterday, it seems like a timely question: why did Jesus die?

Some would say: "Jesus died so that we can be forgiven". I don't think so.

What sort of God would require, or even worse - arrange, the death of their own child as a pre-requisite for offering forgiveness? I reckon God always forgives - always has, always will. Before we even realize something is wrong, God forgives.

I think this is part of the good news that Jesus understood and tried to teach. In doing so, he upset the religious conservatives of his day, who thought God required endless bloody sacrifices in order to forgive. In order to deal with the threat Jesus posed, they had him executed.

I think Jesus did not die so that we can be forgiven but because we are forgiven.

Creeds and songs

Further to my post on creeds, the difficulty I find with creeds persists with worship music, where the vast majority of popular choices (hymns or contemporary) contain lyrics reflecting a single, particular approach to God I cannot affirm.

Maybe it is just me? I know others can "let go" and recite creeds and sing songs whose content they don't agree with because the "why" (being together, connecting with our past, feeling the rhythm) is sufficient for them. But, for me, this feels like leaving my brain at the door. Is it impossible to worship with both "head" and "heart" at the same time?

A minimal creed

Rowland Croucher writes:

In the 1980s I wrote a little book – Recent Trends Among Evangelicals [1] – and tried to argue for a 'minimal creed'. Here's mine (at present): 1. One God: Father, Son, Spirit; 2. Jesus is my Lord; 3. The teachings and example of Jesus are authoritative for faith and conduct; 4. Love for, acceptance of and full fellowship with all who thus confess their allegiance to Jesus Christ; 5. Our calling to minister in the world as Jesus did – in terms of justice, compassion and evangelism.

I am uncomfortable with creeds. I know how awkward it feels when the person up the front (often following Uniting in Worship liturgy) says "Let's together affirm our faith" and you stand in silence while everyone else recites the Apostle's or Nicene Creed. For a while, I quietly recited it as a nod to "what Christians used to believe": the common starting point from where our theology has developed. Then as a "sacramental" practice where the words are largely irrelevant and it is the continuity of this practice through history which is important. However, I eventually decided reciting the Creeds was reinforcing a mindless acceptance of the literal truth of the statements. So I stopped.

Despite this, I still find the concept of succinctly summarizing my faith fascinating. And I like the idea of a set of statements to bring people together and unite people in common mission and vision. Hence,
I like the idea of "minimal creed". Yet I am not sure I could even say the one Rowland prepared. (I note here that Rowland said it was "mine (at present)" indicating that it is not necessarily for anyone else, like me, nor fixed for all time.) For example, I like the concept of 1. but would prefer the phrase "One God: Creator, Christ, Spirit" to reflect my understanding that God is neither male nor female. Similarly 2., for me, would be "Jesus is my way to God", dispensing with the gender and imperial overtones of "Lord". 3 is OK, but, in a communal context, I worry it whitewashes the issue of what, from the record we have, is legitimate "teaching and example of Jesus" and what is later embellishment. 4 and 5 seem fine to me.

I raise this not to challenge Rowland's creed, but simply to reflect on the diversity that was the focus of the earlier part of his post. I am sure others will find things in my choice of words that don't reflect their understanding. With such a diverse range of beliefs, is a creed useful? Furthermore, is a creed *possible*? If so, what would it contain: what are the set of words "everyone" could stand up and
honestly and loudly proclaim?

Faith healing

Godless Gross asks some questions about faith healing in the context of various stories of children dying as a result of their parents choosing to pray for healing rather than obtaining professional medical help. These stories are tragic and, indeed, criminal. However, as Gross himself notes, they are "examples of destructive fundamentalism" rather than the norm of Christian belief.

Nonetheless, it is important we act to prevent similar future tragedies. Society must continue to "enforce the law with rigour". The church must do a better job at educating its members that belief in magical (or miraculous) intervention is not a pre-requisite for faith.

Interestingly, this misunderstanding appears to extend deeply into the atheist community. Gross says "Jesus was a faith healer and this was one of the bases of his claims to divinity."

No. The people who wrote this part of the bible said Jesus performed miraculous healings. Which doesn't mean Jesus actually did perform miraculous healings. Jesus probably did heal people, but in the normal, "medical" sense, and sometimes in the psychosomatic sense. To your average person of the day, with no knowledge of science, this would be a miracle. And the amount, nature, and extent of those miracles would be amplified by rumour.

If only Christians and atheists alike could move past the literal interpretation to the metaphorical one. Jesus is a faith healer to the extent that the way and philosophy of life ("faith") taught by Jesus (i.e., love, compassion, tolerance, social justice, peace, etc.) leads to wholeness of body, mind, and spirit ("healing").

Does God magically intervene in the world?

If God *does* magically intervene, then I find a theological problem arises when some prayers go unanswered.

For example, consider the case of someone praying for healing that doesn't eventuate. As I believe in a God of unconditional love, I don't think God would ignore prayers, choose those to be answered on a whim, or punish people by refusing to answer prayers because of a lack of faith or
insufficient piety.

Perhaps, God could intervene but chooses not to, for reasons such as the personal growth of the individual who is sick or a greater good that arises from their illness? I do believe good things can arise from bad situations. A period of illness can motivate us to re-focus on what is really important in life. The death of a love one could motivate someone to dedicate their life to medicine - treating and curing many hundreds of others. However, I am uncomfortable with the idea of a manipulative God who is content to let one person suffer for the benefit of others. It doesn't sit well with the shepherd who leaves the 99 to rescue the 1. Furthermore, if God is all-powerful, then presumably God could devise a way for the greater good to be achieved and the individual to be healed.

This leaves me with the belief that God does answer prayer, but that prayer doesn't work through magical intervention. I believe prayer changes us, leading to our own action to bring about the change we are praying for. I am also open to a natural, biological mechanism in the universe, which sits grounded in God, that we don't understand yet but that we unconsciously tap into when we pray.

However it works, I believe in the value of prayer

In regard to the interventionist notions of prayer in the New Testament: more people at that time would have believed this to be the way prayer worked than they do now, including the authors of the biblical text. Thus, for example, the stories of the miracles of Jesus, are either a record of actual events where the healing was interpreted to be (but wasn't) magical/miraculous, or stories written to help convey the theology people were building up around the person of Jesus (but not actual events).

More on prayer

I see prayer as "re-visioning" the world. Through prayer we recognise
the problems with how things are and focus on how things should be.
Exactly how this works, i.e., leads to real, physical change in the
world, remains a mystery.

I think part of the answer is that "prayer changes us". By focussing
on how things should be, we develop motivation and inspiration to make
changes in the world towards realising the vision of how things should
be.

I think it certainly doesn't work by God magically or miraculously
intervening the world at our request.

Having made these two points, I am not bold enough to say prayer
only works by changing us in the way described above. People have
claim to pray for specific requests and later receive what they prayed
for. I am not comfortable with saying these instances are all
coincidences. However, I am comfortable in saying that if prayer does,
in some way, lead directly to changes in the world, that this
happens through a normal, physical/biological process - just one
beyond the current limits of our scientific knowledge.

(Extract from a post I sent to the insights-l mailing list).

Liberal fundamentalists

Rowland Croucher writes:

Frances McNabb probably never preaches, these days, without including what he's against, or without using terms like 'myth', which can be very confusing to layfolk. I call this aggressive anti-conservative approach 'liberal fundamentalism'.

I think "liberal fundamentalism" is unfair. In my experience, fundamentalists are those who seek to force their views on others. A classic example is tacitly or openly prolonging injustice against those they don't agree with in the hope the hardship will encourage them to change their minds. Denying people communion is another common tactic. I think the people Rowland mention's immediately following this quote are certainly strong advocates for a liberal perspective, and they do pursue this mainly through addressing the faults in the conservative perspective. I don't think this makes them fundamentalists.

On another note, it really is so much easier to describe what progressives don't believe rather than what they do believe. This is not because the beliefs are less well defined, it is because a core component of progressive belief is accepting that our current knowledge is limited. Thus any statement we make about God will certainly not capture the full nature of God and will be open to change as our knowledge of and relationship with God develops over time.

Thus, for example, we can confidently say God is not an old man inhabiting some physical place above the sky, but it is much more difficult to describe what God is.