Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: st0o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Steven Timm) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Don't understand Message-ID: Date: 7 Jan 90 02:52:48 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 42 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu By private communication [name omitted. You really should avoid posting private communications unless you know they were intended to be made public. --clh] made the following request about my comment >Can you try again to answer this one for me! My response back would have >to be: So why did God make the requirement to save us from ourselves as >having to have a part of Him become human and then die? God made up this >system, didn't He? AND....why do we need saving from ourselves? What does >this mean? What are we being saved from? Ourselves???? Why is this the >only way? Sort of a silly way, isn't it? And what is the risk to a God >that created everything? What risk? 1. Why did God make the requirement? Nothing required God to make the sacrifice. Jesus Christ came to the earth of his own free will, and if He had not come, He could have survived with no risk to himself. His response was more like a parent trying to save a child from drowning (after the child had jumped into the water against the parent's orders) 2. Why did we need to be saved from ourselves, and what risk was involved? It's true that God created everything, but man (with help from the devil) has perverted the original beautiful creation (where everybody was nice and moral and nobody had to die). Jesus Christ became man and risked falling into the same trap of sin from which He was trying to rescue us. We didn't deserve to be rescued. But God made an unselfish sacrifice because He saw our need. Just a few words about the original Don't Understand posting. The comment was made that Christians must have awful low self-esteem and be carrying lots of guilt to think that Jesus would die for them. Unfortunately, many of them do. They chastise themselves and go through tremendous guilt trips because they think they were so sinful to "force" Jesus to die. By so doing, they are blocking the one way that they can rid themselves of our guilt. God did not create the problem of sin, yet He sent His son to take all the blame and punishment for that sin so we can live free of guilt, and not be plagued by low self-esteem. May I also add that some Christians use Christ's sacrifice to develop artificially high self-esteem "Jesus died for me--I must have really been worth a lot." In so doing, they trade cause for effect. It is Jesus's death which gives us infinite worth--not vice versa. Realizing that we are of infinite value frees us from having to build ourselves up, or tear ourselves down.