Can I be a good Christian if I don't embrace the belief that Jesus Christ was sent to Earth in human form by His Father, The Creator We Call God, to suffer and die for the sins of man? To be sure, I am a Christian. But I know that this is not an easy question for most Christians. For some Christians it isn't even a safe question. Many, perhaps most, traditional, conservative, fundamentalist, and other stereotypical Christians would say unequivocally that I am not a good Christian if I don't believe Jesus Christ was the final sacrifice for the atonement and forgiveness of sin.
For most Christian, it is easy to accept that principle of Christianity. But, for me, the belief is linear and succinct if and only if I ignore the implications. Because, if I believe that Jesus Christ was the "final" human sacrifice for the atonement and forgiveness of the sins of humankind, then I have to believe that God The Father, God The Creator, required human sacrifice for the atonement and forgiveness of the sins of humankind.
And if I believed that, then I am forced to consider that the generations of the people Christians call heathens from tribes, cultures, cults, and religions that sacrificed young virgins, women, little children, and captured slaves to appease God or the gods had the right idea even if they were sometimes trying to appease a false God.
We can't have it both ways. Either the heathens were right, and our God of Creation required human sacrifice for the atonement and forgiveness of sin or Our God Of Creation did not require human sacrifice for the atonement and forgiveness of sin.
And if God once required human sacrifice, only to later change His Mind, why did He need to send His Only Begotten Son to suffer the brutality Jesus The Christ Suffered to be the final sacrifice? Why couldn't God have just said, "I change my mind". I don't need a sacrifice anymore, neither animal, nor fowl, nor human, nor My Only Begotten Son", if that were His Wont?
Or is it more likely that God Never required human mothers and fathers to murder their sons and daughters and other human beings for the purpose of appeasing Him. Nor did he require a burnt offering of either an animal or a human sacrifice--neither from Abraham nor from anyone else.
And maybe, just maybe, God The Creator enabled the great men who helped establish the great religion of Christianity and its widespread influence to use the life, sacrifices, suffering, crucifixion, and death of Jesus Christ to serve as the final human sacrifice, because human sacrifice was so fixed in their minds and the perpetuation of sacrifice was brutal, uncivilized, unnecessary, and antithetical to God's Will.
I don't know about you, but the God of Love preached to me all my life could not have ever required human sacrifice as atonement and forgiveness of sin for any group of people, let alone for all of humankind.
God Embraces human life on this living planet we call Earth. God Embraces human life because God needs us to establish Symbiotic Intimacy with Him while we exist in human flesh. It is why we were created. And the death of any person or persons by the hands of any other person or persons for any reason except for self preservation is an abomination to our Symbiotic God Of Creation. Anything else would contradict His Reasons for creating us.
In this season of Lent and the advent of Easter Sunday, I am not convinced that my desire not to embrace the human sacrifice side of Christianity makes me a "bad" Christian, or not a Christian at all. However, of this I can be sure; if I do my best to live a life taught to us and exemplified by Jesus The Christ, and succeed even a little or maybe a lot, then I have a good chance of being deemed a Good Christian by my Symbiotic God of Creation and by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In the final analysis, that is all that matters.
Selah.
