Jesus Didn't Die for Your (or My) Sins

It's okay to admit it. You can still be a Christian

Patti Smith at the Rosegarten, Mannheim, Germany on March 15, 1978. Photo by Klaus Hiltscher, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic — no changes were made .

When she sang, "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine," in Gloria: In Excelsis Deo Patti Smith was clearly onto something. Okay, purists — Van Morrison’s the guy who wrote it, but neither was making a theological statement no matter how many times the lyrics mention God. (Okay, it’s only once.)

But still, it’s an anthem, and I’m a product of alt rock radio, so it’s my personal theological statement — played ear-bleed loud, every time.

Happily, my pastor and I are in complete accord on this one.

She and I met the other day to chat about theology and the books we’ve been reading. She loaned me Original Blessing by Matthew Fox, and I loaned her The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Bart D. Ehrman.

As I was gathering my stuff to leave, we were talking about God knows what and she abruptly asked me, “You don’t believe in substitutionary atonement, do you?” (That’s the whole “Jesus died for somebody’s sins” thing comes in.

“Oh, God no.” I shuddered

“Yeah, me neither,” she said, and our conversation moved on. We enjoyed an immediate kinship on this point. Not everyone agrees, however.

When I’m discussing this with others, I say things like this:

Embrace the allegory

• The people of the ancient Greco-Roman world spoke and thought in allegories. Generations of philosophers trained their students by using allegory when explaining difficult concepts. Keeping this in mind while reading the New Testament opens it up in ways that a literal interpretation never will.

• If we approach the death of Jesus as atonement for sin as a fact, we end up with a rather cruel and dickish god. Why require sacrifice at all? We don’t ask that of our own earthy children. Nor would we punish them throughout eternity for anything they did.

• I mean, God did say, “don’t come before me empty-handed,” in what, Exodus? So it’s not like we don’t have a precedent for that. However, the God of the Old Testament — much of it, anyway — is Yahweh, one of the sons of El. Yahweh, Baal, and other local gods of the Levant were related to El in much the same way that Zeus and Poseidon were related to Kronos, in the Greek pantheon. What I’m saying is that Yahweh’s not the ultimate deity; he’s just the one that the tribes of Israel have a contact with.

• If we approach the death of Jesus as an unfortunate incident of history, that makes much more sense. We don’t have to abandon the idea of “dying for sins” completely, however, if we just focus on the love that deity would have for humankind — enough to sacrifice himself (or his icon on earth) in order to keep us safe.

• Save us from what? From the unquenchable fires of an eternal hell, if we take this all literally. Allegorically, it references the pain of separation from our deeper selves, from alienation, from being ungrounded, cut off from our root, left with a nagging “something’s missing in my life” feeling if we take this allegorically. That’s hell enough, and one I would take pains to avoid.

• For me, the message of a loving deity is much more powerful than the selfish, “what have you brought me?” kind. I just wouldn’t worship that kind of deity. Fear shouldn’t be the reason we approach God. Love and trust should be.

Of course, I only talk like this if someone is curious to know what I think. If my companions seem uninterested, or like theology is not open for discussion, then I just slide on to talking about the weather, or coffee, or dogs. Truth is an ever-moving target, something we can near but never quite hit.

Or maybe we can, if we work hard and are lucky.

Either way, let’s just say — “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”