Who is Jesus the Christ? As my seven and five year old children would say, Jesus is God’s son. Oh, if only it were that simple of an answer. This is a question that every Christian, when they are being honest, struggles to answer their entire life. I have experienced moments of certainty when faced with this question, only to succumb to insecurity once more. For instance, my first experience of rejecting Jesus came to me after reading Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code in the early 2000’s. My sudden exposure to the historical, albeit fictionally structured, version of Jesus was at odds with the dogmatic representations to which I had grown accustomed. Yet it was during this spiritual crisis that I received my first experience of divine co-creation.
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I propose that God did not intend for Jesus to die on the cross, but to reveal God’s intended image for humanity as a mediator. Jesus was sent to show humanity a better way, a loving way. It was humanity’s sinful nature that crucified Jesus and not God. After all, the societal focus toward the marginalized which Jesus not only proposed but exemplified through his actions would incite turmoil, anger, and violence in the privileged groups of any era; “groups are notoriously selfish and have limited capacity to step outside of their interests and see the world from another group’s standpoint.” Humanity needed a Christ like Jesus to force the privileged heads to look upon the marginalized and God knew this. As a result of this reasoning, my view appears to fit the arguments of Abelard in the moral exemplar theory of atonement. “Christ’s love, demonstrated to us in the Gospels, compels us to respond in kind…inspire[s] us to live as Christ lived.”
My search to reconcile my feelings regarding atonement appears to ignore the importance of Jesus death. I do not wish to sterilize the cross for human consumption. What was done to Jesus was monstrous and should never be forgotten. The cross is an incredible symbol for human sin and stands as “a reminder of how humans have tried throughout history to destroy visions of righting relationships that involve transformation of tradition [,] … social relations and arrangements sanctioned by the status
I propose that God did not intend for Jesus to die on the cross, but to reveal God’s intended image for humanity as a mediator. Jesus was sent to show humanity a better way, a loving way. It was humanity’s sinful nature that crucified Jesus and not God. After all, the societal focus toward the marginalized which Jesus not only proposed but exemplified through his actions would incite turmoil, anger, and violence in the privileged groups of any era; “groups are notoriously selfish and have limited capacity to step outside of their interests and see the world from another group’s standpoint.” Humanity needed a Christ like Jesus to force the privileged heads to look upon the marginalized and God knew this. As a result of this reasoning, my view appears to fit the arguments of Abelard in the moral exemplar theory of atonement. “Christ’s love, demonstrated to us in the Gospels, compels us to respond in kind…inspire[s] us to live as Christ lived.”
My search to reconcile my feelings regarding atonement appears to ignore the importance of Jesus death. I do not wish to sterilize the cross for human consumption. What was done to Jesus was monstrous and should never be forgotten. The cross is an incredible symbol for human sin and stands as “a reminder of how humans have tried throughout history to destroy visions of righting relationships that involve transformation of tradition [,] … social relations and arrangements sanctioned by the status