Christianity

Quora Answer : As an atheist can you summarise the key beliefs of Christians and why they are important?

May 13, 2014

I'll try :

1) God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all good and created the universe as we know it.

2) Early in its history, mankind, who was especially created by God for a close relationship with Him (including both love and obedience) rebelliously disobeyed a direct injunction from God. An action which required some kind of punishment or at least rupture of the relationship.

3) Whether the reaction was active PUNISHMENT or merely a separation / damaged relationship with God, Christians are agreed that it obtains for all human descendants of this original rebellious couple. Part of the burden of this "sin" is physical death.

4) God did have a plan to rebuild the broken bridges with mankind. What it involved was God himself taking on the inherited burden of this initial rift. Lifting the sin that mankind was condemned to. However, this required an act of extreme sacrifice. God's own son would need to die. In doing so he would absorb the death that mankind was condemned to, but because of his divine nature he would also "defeat" death and return to life. And, in doing so, "conquer "death.

This plan is exactly what happened, around 2000 years ago.

5) Even though Jesus did die for our sins, death and original sin didn't go away entirely. They're still around. And still a mortal peril.

But someone who embraces the story of Jesus. Who cultivates a strong and unquestioning belief in it, and actively pursues a relationship with God / Jesus has a route to being saved from this sin. There's nothing you can do to guarantee it, but if you are in a good relationship with God when your physical body "dies", then you can hope that he will cause you to be saved. He has promised eternal pleasurable life to those in a good relationship with him. And trusting in this promise is a crucial part of being in a good relationship with him.

For those who don't accept and aren't in a good relationship with him at the point of their physical death, it maybe that there is also eternal life, but a very unpleasant one of punishment and torturer.

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My Comments :

[2] It's hard for me personally to understand why an all-powerful universe creator with a strong affection for and plan for mankind found this disobedience such a big deal, especially as

a) nothing in the Bible indicates it was due to malice or was a deliberate attempt
to slight God. (It seems to be a mixture of curiosity, and perhaps ambition on Eve's part and solidarity on Adam's)

b) God already knew it was going to happen and must have been mentally prepared for it.

c) parents habitually forgive and forget the disobediences of their beloved children.

But Christians accept that it was a big deal. They also accept that an all-powerful God didn't just undo the problem (eg. cause Adam and Eve to forget the knowledge they had gained through eating the fruit.) but allowed it to shape all subsequent relationships between God and mankind.

[3] Once again, it's hard for me to understand why Christians aren't more troubled by the idea that the guilt of particular free-willed individuals should stick to their descendants, but Christians seem to agree that it's the case. And that it's the proper way things should be.

I'm also a bit confused as to whether Christians believe that there was no physical death BEFORE the fall. There certainly seems to be reference to "eating" and food, and if food isn't for sustaining life, what IS it for? Pre-fall?

There's also a warning from God that death will follow from eating from the tree of knowledge. So death is clearly a concept before the fall, even if not a reality.

[4] The mechanics of all this are pretty weird. It intuitively seems that an all-powerful being who created the universe and everything in it was not obliged to do things this way. Sacrifice is normally done by a weaker party to appease a stronger one. But who did God need to give his son to? If God decided that the burden was lifted and that a route to forgiveness and reconciliation was possible, why not simply declare it to be so? Why introduce a son at all, or require him to go through the motions of being killed (especially as the fact that Christ was going to resurrect and triumph over death was already preordained.)

It's hard to escape the suspicion that this is less an accurate description of how the moral universe works, and more just another colourful version of the tropes of sacrificial kings that were common in primitive societies throughout the world. (See The Golden Bough for more details.)

[5] There seems to be quite a lot of disagreement among Christians about what was actually changed by Christ's sacrifice. For it to be meaningful, the options available to the devout worshipper of God after Christ must be different from those available before Him. But that means that many loyal prophets in the Old Testament couldn't have been saved. Or at least not in the same way as Christians.

Most Christians seem to agree with this but some are clearly uncomfortable and assume that an all-powerful God may have had some alternative plan for loyal pre-Christians.

There also seems to be a lot of disagreement as to the relative importance of being good vs. committing yourself to unquestioning faith in the story of Jesus in being saved. And on the issue of the torture : some Christians downplaying it (it's a metaphor for separation from God, it's more like non-existence) and others revelling in it.