What's Left When You Realize Jesus Didn't Die for Your Sins?

There's meaning in the metaphor

Image by author using CanvaPro.

My teen, who never stepped foot into a church until he was fifteen years old, is slated to sing with the choir on Easter. He’s the youngest by a decade and the newest to join. Also: teen. I’ve got him on a schedule of listening to the four pieces he’ll need to know each morning while he’s eating breakfast. If I can get those four assigned pieces of music screwed into his subconscious, it’ll be that much easier for him to wing it — as he inevitably will — when he’s got to stand up and sing.

That’s why my current earworms are all cantatas and whatnot, with one exception

The folksy outlier in Easter’s lineup is “Up From the Grave He Arose” — a classic hymn by Daniel Thornton. It’s jaunty, predictably rhymed, and jam-packed with hooks. Thornton probably wrote it for quaint back rooms and street corners where the original English Methodists held their services. That would explain the hint of H.M.S. Pinafore and Pirates of Penzance, with just a touch of something strident — like the Russian national anthem.

Fair warning: the refrain will crawl right into your brain and remain there, replaying itself for the rest of the day / week. Sorry to tell you this now if you’ve already clicked on it. I’ve only heard it twice and I’m already pawing my ears like a dog trying to get it out of my head.

Then there’s the troubling theology of it

I'm one of those odd Christians that gets no juice from the resurrection story. I’m a big fan of Jesus’ message, but give zero fucks about the mythology that grew around his story — like crabgrass in a graveyard — after his death.

Wait a second…I actually do give some fucks. Just not in the way my literal-interpretation friends — the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals — do.

Let’s flashback to the year 30, or 33, depending on who you’re reading. When Jesus was arrested, charged with crimes against the state, sentenced, and executed, his followers were shocked. This was not what they were expecting. Jesus was, for most, a messianic figure — and before his death many put their hopes in his helping free Israel from Roman occupation. When their leader was publicly executed, the earliest Christians — if we can call them that — blindsided. They’d banked on Jesus, and lost. Fearing the cold sword of justice might land on their neck as well, the crowds dissipated in confusion and defeat.

Someone needed to come up with a workaround, and they did

An anonymous genius rewrote the plot, so that what had been an unexpected and tragic end to a young religious leader’s life was transformed into Fate, preordained by God, and signaled by prophesy.

Newsflash: Everything’s under control — the crucifixion had to happen. Create the concept of substitutionary atonement — i.e., Jesus died for the sins of mankind — and suddenly the whole thing came together.

Inspired by this new marketing campaign…

Many reversed their exodus and grabbed the banner of forgiveness-for-hire. Because of this, the message of a loving, parental God espoused by an illiterate rustic in the ancient Levant grew into a theology of which almost everyone on Earth — aside from perhaps a few happy Amazonians — is aware.

If not for the forgotten influencer who rewrote the narrative, only historians of ancient Semitic history would stand a chance of knowing anything Jesus’ message. It would be as arcane as Atenism, if Akhenaten had been a carpenter’s son instead of a pharaoh.

So, yay for that remarkable save!

Unfortunately, this hid Jesus’ message beneath a thick layer of mythology that clings to it still. Why not? It’s been so easy for lazy revivalists to threaten those who ignore them with the fires of hell. It’s a picture so dire that even those who only believe .001% in its possibility can still summon dread.

Here’s a puzzler: is this-for-that theology responsible for the number of Christian literalists today…or were Christian literalists responsible for it coming into being in the first place?

Sorry, I threw you a trick question. Early Christians were not literalists. Their culture and understanding ran on allegory.

Early Christians hungered for story, not statistics

Let’s face it — creating a hell in the first place would be completely out of character for the loving, parental deity Jesus espoused. So, too the demand for blood sacrifice — either of the doves and lambs in the Temple of Solomon or the guy from Nazareth.

Here’s where we need to put our metaphor caps on. Now, look again at the crucifixion.

We find a loving, parental deity that loves us so much that they would sacrifice themself for us. Would we die so our children could live? Absolutely, and without question. Every time.

Grasping that feeling of profound and passionate love — the kind that renders willing to sacrifice ourselves completely — transfers to us something profound about the divine.

Don’t try to explain the mechanics of it

That sort of thinking breaks down when looking at that level of existence. Particle physics in a lab can’t explain the world of general relativity and interstellar space. In the same way, our understanding of law or how a gasoline engine works tells us nothing about the divine.

Hold on to the feeling and forget about the rest. It doesn’t make sense if you try to understand it logically, so don’t. The meaning, the meat, is in the metaphor.

Look there for your answers.