The Sacrifice

I'm not a Christian. As a young child, after my father married my stepmother, she was an ambassador for the faith and convinced me that I needed saving from the sinful ways of Earth, and so I accepted Jesus into my heart as my savior. Now, whether a 7-year-old kid really has the high-level brain functions required to fully comprehend the faith is another story, but I was happy to go along with it, because it made my dad happy and made my stepmother happy, and (probably most importantly for me) my brothers had gotten saved, so I was eager to join them. I won't go into the details of my childhood and the varied crooks and nannies, etc., that eventually led me to disavow my belief as a teenager, but disavow I did, and so now I'm what one would call an agnostic.

With this preamble out of the way, I wanted to talk about the core concept behind Christianity: that of the great sacrifice that Jesus made for humanity. It's something I've been kicking around in my mind a lot in the past few years, and after a conversation with my brother a couple of months ago that centered on religion, I began to contemplate upon it more.

According to the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God. Also, he was God. He was a human who wasn't human. And he was sent to Earth to spread the word about God and his infinite love for mankind and so on and so forth. (I won't go into the details of Christian doctrine here. This is the Internet, and there are lots of places to go for that.) He was sent here to die as an act of atonement for the sins of mankind. All that was asked of humans was that we believed that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, born around 3-5 BCE, was the son of God and that he sacrificed his life on a cross for our sins.

Cartoon depiction of Golgotha, where Jesus died

The word sacrifice sticks out for me quite a bit in this story. Assuming that Jesus was an actual historical figure, and that he did die on that Roman cross 2,000 years ago for being a general pain in the ass to the Men of Influence in the region, at first glance it would appear that he did make the ultimate sacrifice for what he believed: he gave his life. Hard to get much bigger than that as far as sacrifices go. My problem with this is that he had personally told pretty much everyone who would listen that he was the son of God, and he claimed to have knowledge of the afterlife and what was awaiting those who followed him, that believers would stand by God's side in the Kingdom of Heaven and enjoy bliss beyond their wildest dreams. And why should they believe him? Because he'd been there and he knew exactly what to expect after death.

This isn't to diminish the pain and agony that the New Testament describes Jesus suffering as he was crucified. Obviously, that's a horrific way to die for anyone (including the two thieves who hung on similar crosses next to him.) But the thing about death that strikes the most fear into humans is the uncertainty. You fear death because you don't know what's in store. No one does, and in my opinion (unless some new evidence comes to light), no living human can.

But Jesus had no such uncertainty. He knew exactly what awaited him, if his words are to be believed. He knew that once the oxygen stopped circulating through his brain and his life ended, he would never again have worries or pain or sorrow or fear, and he knew the exact nature of what was in store for him. Other humans don't have that luxury. As mortals, we don't know what awaits us post-death. Some people believe that certain things await them, but they don't, and they cannot, know with certainty what their afterlife will be like.

In this sense, Jesus is almost like a tourist. He comes down to Earth, takes in the local cuisine, sees some sights, talks to some folks, does some parlor tricks, and so on. He feels immense pain (psychically and physically) while here, but, again, he knows it's only fleeting. Then he dies and gets to return to Heaven, where he can sip on a glass of wine and be immersed in bliss for eternity, while the Earthbound humans continue to suffer and starve and do all the things that stupid human beings do. And yet his death is considered "the ultimate sacrifice" and the primary reason to believe what he said and what his acolytes said after he was dead. It seems somewhat akin to a wealthy Western man walking into an impoverished South Asian slum, taking a big wad of money out and waving it around wildly, getting bitten by a mosquito, wincing slightly, and then getting into his private jet that brings him back to a palatial mansion in Europe. (OK, that might be overdoing it a little bit, but you get the idea.)

My feelings on religion aren't acrimonious. I believe that anything that gives someone a reason to get out of bed in the morning and keep trying is a good thing, so long as you're not actively trying to make the world a shittier place in the process.

I ended up writing a lot more on this than I intended, but it still doesn't fully encapsulate my thoughts on the matter. Hopefully I can be a little more concise in my future ramblings.