I’m writing this on my laptop the Sunday morning after the Tornado went through Kentucky. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t make a lot of sense or if this one’s a bit rough cut. I’ve just been up all night, every hour on the hour stoking the wood stove in the basement, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep. The power’s still out, and we have no internet for our computers as of this writing, so I’ll have to post this later.
I’ve been ruminating and meditating a lot lately on “Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory,” the teaching that God demanded a blood sacrifice in order to be able to forgive us for our sins and misdeeds. I written about blood sacrifices pre-dating the Mosaic Law, and even Abraham, and God never requiring them or regulating them for the forgiveness of sins until the Mosaic Law, and that this was really an idea resulting from a malfunctioning human mind which God co-opted for His own purposes. As Paul wrote, the Mosaic Law was our tutor or schoolmaster to train us up to be ready for Jesus Christ, but when Christ came, the Law, the Torah, was no longer necessary. I’ve also written about the reason why Jesus died, not because God demanded blood for forgiveness, but because we needed to be joined to Him in His death and resurrection in order to be able to not sin, that is, to be able to not respond or act from our own malfunctioning neurology and psychology, but to enable Christ to respond, speak, and act through us just as John wrote in his first epistle, “whatever is born of God does not sin.”
Here’s the thing, and this is my thought, it’s okay if you believe that Jesus died in order for your sins to be forgiven. I think this is the understanding that’s missing from most progressives I’ve read now and listened to. Did God need a blood sacrifice in order to forgive? No. He just wants the person to change his or her mind and turn to Him. But there is a need within the malfunctioning human psyche for retribution upon behaviors it sees as wrong, evil, or criminal. As part of the malfunction itself, the need to arbitrarily divide things as “good” or “evil” (rooted in treating what pleases and displeases the psyche as either a survival necessity or threat) in the human mind the “evil” actions must be balanced and punished. When the punishment demands death, and the offender is oneself, this becomes problematic. It’s not hard to see how the malfunctioning human psyche went to sacrificial “substitutionary atonement” to begin with thousands of years ago. It’s also not hard to see how, even with the entrenched practice of sacrifices for sins, people can still doubt whether or not they’re forgiven even when the proper atoning sacrifices have been made. And this is true with this understanding being applied to Christ’s sacrifice as well. How many people have I met and talked to that, even supposedly after accepting and believing that Christ died for their sins, still agonize over whether or not they’ve been forgiven? It’s the malfunctioning human psyche which needs to accept that the “evil” it has done, violating it’s own standards of right and wrong whatever they might be, has been let go by God. It often can’t do this because it itself can’t let it go.
God’s okay with Christ’s death on the cross also acting to appease this demand for retribution for crimes and sins committed. Is that why He actually died for us? No, but if it helps for us to turn around and accept His forgiveness, He’s good with it. Does it make Him look like a vengeful tribal god? Depending on who you talk to and where their understanding is at, it can, but God’s not concerned necessarily with how it makes Him look as much as He’s concerned with bringing everyone to Himself.
Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself so we don’t have to be slaves to our own malfunctioning brains and psyches any longer. He died and rose from the dead in order to join us to Himself so that His Spirit could take control of our actions, behaviors, and responses. There is no question on this point. Jesus Christ died for us to free us from our sin, that is, the malfunctioning behavioral mechanisms in our brains. But God didn’t need His death, the blood sacrifice of an innocent victim, in order to forgive those malfunctioning behaviors, our malfunctioning psyches did. And if that’s what it takes for us to accept His freely given forgiveness, then He’s good with it.
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