Well, I was brought up on in a Catholic family, so I started off believing the story of Jesus.
But it eventually dawned on me that it made no sense. Now Christian believers will be quick to tell me that God’s Word (the bible) isn’t obliged to make sense, it’s just to be believed.
Well, the idea that the bible is the inerrant word of God, also didn’t make any sense. So I reviewed the story on its own merits.
The general idea is that God punishes man for sin, and that punishment is in the form of some kind of pain, the pain being “the price you pay” for your sin. So there is a price of pain to be paid to God for your sins.
Alright, but then God decided that that is hard on people, so he sends his only son to Earth in a human body to suffer and die on a cross to pay for our sins.
So in other words, God has to get paid with pain. If you sin, someone has to pay God for your sin. God absolutely demands this payment, but it doesn’t matter if someone else suffers pain on your behalf, that still would pay God just as much as if the sinner himself paid.
And the only way someone could pay for ALL of humanity’s sins is if his own precious Son suffered to such an extreme that enough pain was experienced by his Son so as to pay up on all the suffering that God absolutely demands for human sins.
Alright, it’s a fascinating story, but it just doesn’t add up, it just doesn’t make sense.
“Yeah but God said it so you should believe it!!”
Well as I say, I don’t believe the bible is God’s inerrant word. It’s got some good stuff in it, but most of it doesn’t make sense to me either.
God is perfectly capable of speaking to me directly, he doesn’t need a book to do it, especially a book that is ridiculous in so many ways.
If you ask me, (and by this time many of you would never ask me), the only reason why so many people believe in all this nonsense is because the story of Hell is the torture of fire for all eternity. They may not be sure whether the story of Hell is true or not, but they figure they better not take their chances. Best to be on the safe side and go along with the religion.
But only if you’re born into the religion. If you were born into a Muslim home, then the Koran is what you’ll need to go along with. Or any of the other places on Earth where religious books other than the bible are believed.
~ Ben Gilberti