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(Easter) Sunday Soapbox: Sacrificing Logic

April 12th, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

As I write this, the minutes are rapidly running out of Easter Sunday 2009. Arguably the most “holy” holiday on the Christian calendar, Easter is the celebration of the central story that underlies the entire faith; the death and subsequent resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The point of the resurrection story is that is represents a shift from the way sin was handled by the Bronze-Age Hebrews, from whose guilt-ridden ranks the Christians eventually emerged. If you were Jewish and you messed up, you had to slaughter and burn a bunch of livestock as an offering, to earn God’s forgiveness.

After a couple millennia of bitchin’ barbecue, God apparently decided he had to watch his cholesterol, so he came up with a compromise. He sent Jesus (who, according to conventional Christian doctrine was simultaneously God and his own son) to Earth as a sort of catchall sacrifice. Jesus died a horribly ghastly death, and this was sufficient to earn forgiveness for the sins of everyone who had ever lived, or would ever live in the future. Then, to prove his divinity, Jesus (God) rose from the dead and did some more preaching before went back to heaven to be with his father, who was also God. One supposes that he was literally beside himself.

I have a question about this. I know, you’re shocked.

For now, we’re going to ignore the squirrely math that says that three guys can be three guys and one guy at the same time, since Dr. Manhattan managed that in Watchmen. We’re also going to look past the wildly improbable claim that Jesus was raised from the dead. He could have been a zombie, or he could have gone to the same apothecary as Juliet. Either way, that’s a mindbender for another time. Instead, we’re going to focus on the internal logic of the story that God sent Jesus to Earth as a sacrifice, to forgive the sins of the whole world

My question is this. Who, or what, was Jesus sacrificed to? (more…)

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