I saw the above in my Facebook feed this morning. Below it were these words by a pastor named Josh Scott:
Jesus was not “born to die” any more than any other human. He wasn’t born to be the necessary sacrifice to appease his angry Father. His violent death was not necessary, but because empire does what empire always does, his vision of a just and generous kingdom lead him to be in conflict with Rome. By making Jesus an inevitable victim of God we end up letting empire off the hook, which might have been the plan all along.
There were a lot of people who loved the quote and I'm not surprised since it is common understanding in mainline/progressive Christian circles. Jesus dying for our sins is viewed as Jesus appeasing an angry God, like some kind of movie where the people have to sacrifice a virgin woman (why is it always a woman?) to appease the angry volcano god and save their village from destruction.
But I think to understand the coming of Jesus and his death on the cross in that way means a few things: a) the person isn't a Christian and doesn't understand the theology b) someone who is a Christian and hasn't opened a Bible or a book on theology since the Clinton Administration or c) just decided to ignore what the Bible and a few thousand years or theology say about the atonement.
The problem that I have with Josh Scott's statement is that you have to ignore the common understanding of the Trinity and all the verses of the Bible that pain the death of Jesus not as trying to please the angry volcano god, but as a God that is in love with humanity and all of creation. God is in love with us so much that God becomes one of us to live and die as a frail being.
I'm not a theologian, but maybe four years of seminary and years of Sunday School have taught me something different than what Josh Scott thinks is the way Christians worship and also what he offers as an alternative.
What I'm going to do next is share some verses from Scripture that speak to Christ's act on the cross. There's a part of me that hesitates doing this because it could come across as proof-texting and I get turned off by people whose entire writing is just sharing Bible verses. But I think these passages do put together a story that paints a different picture than that of angry sky god.
The first passage is the most familiar: John 3:16. Jesus is talking to the Pharisee Nicodemus and at one point he shares this saying. He starts by saying that God so loved the world. I think some versions even say that God loved the world in this way. The Bible, especially in the Hebrew Scriptures does talk of an angry God, but that's because humanity broke God's heart. Anger is there, but at the root is not anger but love. God loves creation, so much so that God sends God's only son. Note Jesus doesn't say right out that he is going to die, though that might be implied. What Jesus says is that God sends the Son to us. God lives among us which is also what is written in John 1:14 when God is said to have pitched God's tent among humanity.
Let's look at another verse which happens to be my favorite verse: Romans 5:8. It says that God showed God's love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Again, God is showing love and showing how far God's love would go. Again no pissed-off sky God.
The final passage to look at is Philippians 2:5-11. In this passage, the Apostle Paul tells the story of Jesus being God, but giving that status up to become vulnerable, to become a servant willing to sacrifice his own life to free creation. Jesus isn't being forced to do something and he isn't trying to appease God like someone trying to please an abusive alcoholic. Jesus chooses to become a servant who is "obedient to death" out of love of God's creation. The sacrifice was not forced upon Jesus but freely chosen by the Son of God.
The concept of Jesus coming to die is not "spiritual child abuse" but it is about living a life for the sake of others. It is about sacrificial living and dying. When I think about this, I am reminded of Christians who have fought for social justice and against what Josh Scott and others like to call "empire." (A term that I really don't like, but that's for another time.) When I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is his challenging Hitler and Nazi ideology or Martin Luther King confronting Jim Crow and holding America to its ideals I think of them living a life for others to the point of death. It wasn't the same as what Jesus did, but it was Christ-like which is what Christians are supposed to be doing.
The problem with Josh Scott's quote isn't that its heretical; it's that it's ass-backward. Methodist pastor, writer and theologian Jason Micheli wrote an awesome take on his Substack on Mary's Magnificat which is a wonderful song. He was critiquing how we look at the text, which is just focusing on the social justice aspect of Jesus misses the New Testament and most of the Bible. It focuses on liberation, but not salvation. "It’s popular to the point of cliche to insist that God stands on the side of the marginalized and dispossessed and while that’s certainly true, it’s insufficient for, according to scripture, the marginalized and oppressed with whom God stands are also sinners in need of forgiveness and mercy," Micheli writes. "Anyone who has volunteered in a homeless shelter or slept overnight for a hypothermia program knows the poor are not inherently righteous."
In his article, Micheli sees things moving from the transcendent to the immanent, but Scott's quote is a reflection of a lot of progressive Christian thinking that starts with the immanent and without any move toward transcendence. God is involved in the material world, but when it comes to spiritual issues, God is silent. I think we in the mainline world are losing the ability to talk about sin and spirituality because it doesn't make sense in our world of facts.
One of my favorite lines is found in the Christmas hymn "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." In the third verse, Charles Wesley writes the following:
Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Ris’n with healing in His wings. Mild He lays His glory by, Born that (we) man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.
"Born that we no more may die." In Christian parlance, we were dead to sin. In Christ, we are made alive again. But such talk might seem like we are letting the "empire" off the hook. But again, to think that way is to go against a lot of Scripture.
Mainline and Progressive Christianity is very good in talking about the physical condition of people and that should be taken seriously. But humans aren't just material people. We also have spiritual wants. We are created to think and feel that there is something bigger than us.
Was Jesus talking about a "just and generous vision?" Yes, but Jesus was also talking about so much more: about love, God, and the defeat of sin. To ignore this makes our faith not as vibrant as it should be.
I had just seen the same meme and was wondering if I should write some kind of response and yours hit my inbox almost immediately. Spot on brother! Thank you for saving me time...and you probably said it better than I would.