The Great Crucifixion Challenge

This is a challenge that I posted a few years ago on a local web forum with interesting results, so I thought I would try it here as well. Please make a comment if you have an opinion on this. I would purely love to get an answer to this challenge:

For quite some time now I have been puzzled by Christianity and one subject in particular heads the field by quite a long way: The Crucifixion.

As I understand it Jesus Christ, in his day, was seen by many to be something of a rascal and even a threat to the political powers at the time by spreading sedition and insurrection. According to the bible Jesus was arrested by Roman soldiers on the orders of a Jewish high priest and charged with blasphemy. He was then sentenced to death, and subsequently crucified. Am I right so far?

The entire basis for the Christian faith centres on one simple premise. Namely that by his death, on the cross, Jesus somehow atoned for the sins of humanity. This in a nutshell is where I have the problem.

The first thing that springs to mind is that there are two main premises here. On the one hand you have Jesus the trouble maker and enemy of the state, executed on trumped up charges of blasphemy. On the other hand you have Jesus the Messiah, Saviour of all humanity who gave up his life so that we might be saved.

It seems to me that these two ideas do not gel with each other. That is to say, it does not appear that Jesus was giving his life at all; rather he was having it taken away. I am not entirely sure that he had much of a say in the matter.

The second thing that springs to mind is that the idea of Jesus sacrificing himself in order to pay for our sins might be a case of post facto rationalisation whereby his followers crow barred in this whole saviour story after the event.

I digress. All of this is largely irrelevant to my main point because it is the belief of Christians which has prompted this challenge, and Christians certainly do believe in the whole ‘dying for our sins’ thing. The question is: Why?

Let us, for a minute, assume that Jesus did die upon the cross in order to pay for the sins of mankind. First of all, this idea is actually quite scary. I think I am right in saying that there are about two billion Christians in the world today. Two billion people who believe that in order to live their lives correctly they must accept the ritual blood sacrifice of their Messiah. Am I alone in finding this just a tad disturbing?

Of course, mainstream Christianity would not put it this way, but all the hallmarks are their. A sacrifice of a person’s life in order to appease a deity, what would you call it?

Furthermore, and here is the crux of the matter (if you’ll pardon the pun), how does the death of Jesus atone for our sins?

I have thought about this for a long time and I cannot for the life of me figure out why God would need somebody to die in order to forgive us our sins, and when you consider that Christians believe Jesus to have been the physical embodiment of God on Earth, the story takes on an even more bizarre twist. That would mean that God had himself crucified so that he could forgive us!!??

The other point to make here is: Whose sins were atoned as a result of the sacrifice? Was it just the people alive at that time? If so what about all the poor souls who went before? Or was it everybody who had lived up until that point? If that’s the case, how does the crucifixion affect us today? Or perhaps it is everybody who will ever live. In that case, we’re already forgiven and worship becomes superfluous.

My challenge then is this: Is there anybody out there who can explain to me the reason for the crucifixion?

It should be apparent that merely saying “Jesus died for our sins” simply will not do. I need specifics here. I need a cogent explanation for the practical purpose of the blood sacrifice; otherwise Christianity appears to have no more substance than ritual occultism.

As I mentioned earlier, the crucifixion is at the centre of Christianity and so I am expecting quite a few responses. It should be an easy task for a Christian to succinctly answer my questions. However, I do find it odd that one the most important concepts in the Bible is so nebulous and murky. After two thousand years of writes and re-writes I would have expected the style to have settled down a bit by now and for all the creases to have been ironed out. Perhaps it needs a bit more work.