Thought experiment

[Elijah John]

Crucifixion is a tortuous death. We hear even today that sometimes evil groups like ISIS crucify innocent people.

Our natural reaction is outrage.

Why is that?

Similarly, many Christians are very quick to proclaim that "Jesus died in our place" and that we all deserved the punishment that Jesus took on our behalf.

Really?

Do we all deserve crucifixion? To be tortured unto death and beyond?

If so, where do we get our sense of outrage when innocent people are crucified?

If supposedly there is no such thing as an innocent person?

[Checkpoint]

[Replying to post 38 by Checkpoint]

I'm asking you to expound more on your disagreement with EJ, when he says that ransom theory goes out the window.

EJ says the ransom theory goes out the window because the Genesis story is not literal.

I say it is literal, and therefore the ransom is not theory but actuality.

Both Jesus and Paul took it literally; hence it was their teaching. And that of Peter and the writer of Hebrews.

That is the nub of our difference.

It comes down to who and what is believed, and why.

[Justin108]

[Replying to post 11 by rikuoamero]

QUESTION Did the punishment fit the Crime?

Adam and Eve had a single law to obey: not to eat the fruit from a particular tree. The penalty for disobedience was death. Was this not an unnecessarily harsh punishment for such a seemingly minor infraction?

• No at all. As simple as the gesture itself was, it was an act of outright rebellion. The tree signified God right to rule, effectively it was a symbol of God’s sovereignty. Just as a national flag represents the authority and the rule of law that authority imposes and burning a flag is symbolic of a declaration of independence from that authority, so the seriousness of the act of eating from the tree didn't lie in the gesture itself but in what the simple gesture was communicating.

There is a huge difference between deliberately burning a flag in order to get a message across that you hate your country, and eating a fruit out of disobedience.

A person who burns a flag does so with the intention of expressing his disapproval of the government.

Adam and Eve did not eat the fruit with the intention of expressing their disapproval of God (at least there is nothing in Genesis to suggest this intention). It seems far more likely that Adam and Eve did this out of curiosity and peer pressure from the serpent than them doing it to express their hatred of God.

Comparing the two and insisting that "eating the fruit is like burning a flag" is like saying a child who disobeys his mother by stealing a cookie from the cookie jar is like a child burning a picture of his parents. They are not the same. At all.

Besides, do you believe burning a flag deserves the death penalty?

But why impose the death penalty for a bid for independence?

Adam and Eve were effectively saying to their Creator: "We want you to leave us alone, we will from here on in be cutting off all contact with you"

So a child that steals a cookie from a cookie jar is saying to his parents "I hate you and I want to move out"?

[dio9]

Crucifixion is a tortuous death. We hear even today that sometimes evil groups like ISIS crucify innocent people.

Our natural reaction is outrage.

Why is that?

Similarly, many Christians are very quick to proclaim that "Jesus died in our place" and that we all deserved the punishment that Jesus took on our behalf.

Really?

Do we all deserve crucifixion? To be tortured unto death and beyond?

If so, where do we get our sense of outrage when innocent people are crucified?

If supposedly there is no such thing as an innocent person?

The Romans used crucifixion primarily as a form of punishment and to terrorize rather than a form of execution. Roman citizens would never be crucified.

Sure we are outraged it is a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

That some Christians think all of us deserve to be crucified is just wrong religion.