On that day, God experienced the worst suffering I could imagine in three simultaneous directions. God the Father watched his son be brutally killed for something he didn't deserve - for something he didn't do. As the father of three kids myself, I cannot fathom how painful it must have been for God to watch that. God the Son (Jesus) physically experienced that pain. He had whips embedded with bits of bone literally tear chunks of his skin off; he was beaten and then had nails driven into his hands and feet and was then raised on the cross to slowly and painfully suffocate.
Finally, God the Sprit had to stand by and watch it happen and not intervene even though he had the power to do so. He had to let what had to happen, well, happen.
The combination of being slowly killed, watching your son be killed and having to not use the power available to you and let it happen is unimaginable. I wish it wasn't necessary, but the scriptures make it clear that it was. God makes the rules. And while this was awfully violent and grisly, the main point here is that God took it all on himself. He decided it was necessary because of what we had done. He diagnosed the problem, and took the medicine personally. Regardless of whether you ever decide that you agree with God's assessment of the universe and humanity within it, you deserve to know that you are loved enough that God would do that for you. Christ's death and then resurrection gives us life.
That is what John says in his famous quote, "For God loved the world so much that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will never taste spiritual death."
Please know I don't kid myself about this. I have only taken swipes at issues that are massive in this discussion, the accuracy of the scriptures, how/why does a God who claims to be good allow such suffering, even what are the implications for my life of all this ... My book "Should We Fire God?" is 65,000 words and 275 pages and even that is not enough. This is just for me to jump into the conversation.
I still don't like everything the Bible says all the time; I still wish God would stop more suffering than he does, but two things are clear. He loves us beyond what I can grasp. And He plays by his own rules.
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The bible is a work of fiction.
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I prefer "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas". Better illustrations.
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"I started looking into my doubts and found there was much more evidence for the accuracy of the scriptures than I would have ever thought - a jarring amount." [Citation Needed]. Seriously...if you are going to say things like this, you need to back it up. This is where every opinion article for this newspaper fails.
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Jim: I would be interested in having a discussion between some of the more Apologetics minded Christians in your group and some of the Freethinkers in mine. I think that given the right tone of discussion, we could learn a lot from each other.
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