Week 2: Why did Jesus die?

Without Luke or Mark present in the discussion it was a challenge to hold myself back, but here’s how it went…

(Warning, this will be a little less laid back than my previous entry)

Part 1: The video

Once again we were presented a talk by Nicky Gumbel, assuming the last one was supposed to have proven that Jesus existed (spoiler: it didn’t), this talk was to give the reason he died and show how loving God was in ‘sacrificing’ himself/his son for us (wasn’t much of a sacrifice since he, Jesus, got to go to heaven and be worshipped forever).

He starts with the usual stuff, we are all sinners, Romans 3:23 (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,) and John 3:16 etc. All the things you’ve probably heard before. He then listed a few things considered sinful; murder, theft, lying etc. he then says that thinking of someone in anger is equal to murdering them and that committing the smallest sin is equal to committing them all (he used the analogy that making scrambled eggs with 15 good eggs and 1 bad egg would ruin the whole thing) which I personally found horrendous (more on this in the discussions). It honestly felt like listening to Ray Comfort’s “are you a good person”. He stated that the 10 commandments were a good moral guide (doesn’t say which set and even in the set he probably means the first 4 are God being jealous and egocentric) my only thought was should you be observing the feast of the unleavened bread?

A quick anecdote about a Judge paying the fine he just ordered his old friend to pay and how this is compared to Jesus. Another about how when we see something happen we cry out for justice to be done but if we do that ourselves we will always justify it.

Nicky then states that the fact evil occurs is one of the main problems of Christianity yet does not even try to respond to the problem of evil, for those who don’t know the problem of evil goes like this:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent

Is God able to prevent evil, but not willing? Then he is malevolent

Is God able and willing to prevent evil? Then why does evil occur?

Is God neither willing nor able? Then why call him God?
This applies to the Christian and other monotheistic views of God (Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent, and Omnipresent).

Nicky states that even if you think you are good compared to someone else God is perfect, if we use the analogy of height, with the least moral person at the bottom and most at the top, Nicky said that the most moral person would be at the ceiling and God would be in the sky, so when God is looking down all humans look equal (again more on this in discussions). Nicky finished by saying Jesus is perfect, I don’t personally think chasing people with whips is perfect but each to their own (ironic saying each to their own when sat here arguing with them isn’t it? The Alpha Course is aimed at Christians and non-believers though).

He finishes with an anecdote about a man who was addicted to alcohol; he gave his life to Jesus and beat his addiction (failing to note we have these stories for pretty much all religions and even aliens).

There is mention of a cheque with no name on it, from Jesus and the price on it was something like “forgiveness for all your sins” and all you have to do is accept it and write your name to get into heaven.

No mention of Hell, at all. Which is a shame because I couldn’t use the Mafia Boss analogy (one of my favourites) so I will put it here:

A mafia boss walks into a store, he says to the owner “nice store you have here, it would be a shame if it burned down. I tell you what, give me £500 and I won’t burn it down”.

God is basically saying “nice life you have here, shame if you have to burn in hell forever. I tell you what, worship my son and I won’t send you to hell”.

(I know all you Christians are thinking “God doesn’t send you to hell you send yourselves there” just like you burn down your own store by not paying)

But that’s not entirely fair is it?

What’s actually happening is a man who says he works for the mafia is asking for money, you can’t even be sure if the mafia boss is real or that he would burn your store down if he was, same with God. It can be said it is better to worship/pay just in case; this is Pascal’s wager and can be applied to any religion. If it’s better to do things based on what could happen you would have to be a member of every religion ‘just in case’.

Part 2: Discussion

Mary again leads our group off into a room to have a discussion. Mark has gone off to Beta and Luke is no-where to be seen so I was understandably cautious.

I managed to get the first question in and asked

“Do you think it is moral for lying to be considered equal to murder, since committing the least sin is considered equal to committing all of them?”

Someone else added to this saying “Should a liar be considered equal to Hitler? And if Hitler repented…”

I had to clarify that Hitler was indeed Christian (none of them used the ‘No True Scotsman’ fortunately) this clearly shocked them.

The anecdote about the Judge is mentioned,

I ask if it is moral for me to be punished for someone else’s crimes. For example if someone causes £20,000 of damage and they can’t pay it, is it ok for me to pay it for them. Surprisingly a lot of people say “yes but only if you wanted to pay it”.

I then ask is it ok for me to serve someone else’s Jail time if I wanted to? The answer is no.

I ask Mary if we get into heaven through faith or works, she dodges the question by asking what the group think, with varied answers although it was stated either way “Hitler was definitely in Hell”. I had an answer prepared for both:

If works then belief in God/Jesus is irrelevant and all that matters is being a good person.
If faith then you can do literally anything and as long as you ‘truly repent’ you can get into heaven.

We then talk about how and why people sin, I ask “if we do not sin did Jesus die for nothing?” I get answered with everybody sins (in honesty this was the answer I was looking for and used to my advantage later). I jokingly ask whether we should go out and sin to make Jesus's death more worthwhile.

Questioning if anyone has read 1984, thankfully a few had, I consider the belief that thinking of someone in anger is equal to murdering them and, in a very Hitchens kind of way, state that “This is the very definition of thought crime”. I receive no response to this.

The group considers the prospect of thought crime for quite a while, I state how thoughts do not harm someone but actions based on those thoughts do. Someone pipes up with “If you are angry at someone you will take that anger inward, you will become angry at yourself, you will get depressed and harm yourself”. One of the longest slippery slopes I have ever heard my only answer was to consider finding a way to manage anger and whether anger can be justified.

We are signalled that time is running out so I finish with “Since you believe we all sin, and that God created us, is it unfair to say that we are created sick and commanded to be well?”

The question remained unanswered.

Mary brings out some of the cheques Gumbel mentioned and offers everyone a cheque they all take one but I respectfully declined, thinking back it would have made a decent souvenir.

As I finish I can predict some criticisms:

You didn’t mention Hell, Morality, and the Euthyphro Dilemma etc.

How putting the tree in Eden was like putting a loaded gun in a baby’s crib.

How immoral original sin is.

Admittedly I could have mentioned a lot of things but I had to save something for next week…