"Why did they kill Jesus?"
That was the question my wife heard from the back seat of the car one day when our son was about 6 years old.
After stumbling through a few attempts at explaining how some people didn't like what Jesus said and did, and how bad people sometimes are mean to good people, she was interrupted by the voice from the backseat - now brandishing a rather know-it-all tone...
"Mom...I think it was so he could die for our sins."
From then on she knew the best response to those kinds of questions was, "Go ask your father."
Only I don't have a very good answer. To this and many questions like it.
Someone once said something like, "The more we learn, the more we know we don't understand." That is certainly the case with issues of God, faith, religion, and theology. It's kind of like cleaning the kitchen...as soon as you start you begin to find grease and dust and little bits of crumbs in places you forgot were there.
Riding in the back seat of the car my son was apparently musing on one of these crumbs of theology that he had heard in Sunday School, or from his preacher father (kids soak up what they hear even when they're playing with dinosaurs under the pews in church). Somehow the idea with which he quizzed his mother had been planted in his brain as an unequivocal truth: Jesus died for our sins.
It's not that it's untrue, but (contrary to popular religious thinking) it's not the whole truth - or the only truth.
If anybody other than my (at the time) 6 year old son and me ever think about these things, they probably think that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins or to endure the penalty that should be born by us. The fancy term for this is substitutionary atonement.
But I don't like it...because it's cold and calculating - not at all like the God who gathers her children under her wing like a hen with her chicks or like God in Jesus who had compassion for the crowds because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
This week, a couple of days after Easter, I stumbled across an explanation of why Jesus had to die that is much more meaningful to me.
I thought of it while listening to a song by the group, Casting Crowns, called Broken Together.
Obviously the song is about marriage, struggles, and reconciliation.
I have no idea if the songwriters or Casting Crowns had any intention of shedding light on the shared relationship between God and creation when they produced this song. But it perfectly captures how God embraces brokenness for the sake of sustaining a bond of love with us.
I have come to know that love is experienced most deeply in the midst of struggle, pain, and grief. We don't come to truly know one another by sharing vast tomes of knowledge or by accomplishing great feats of strength together. Neither does independence or individualism cause us to care for and deeply love another person. Only through shared tears, sleepless nights, heartache, and blood do we become one.
This is the ultimate truth of Christ crucified. God doesn't require a payment from creation for its sins. God doesn't seek one who will be penalized on behalf of humanity. Rather, God knows that reconciliation and deep love comes in sharing the pain of life and death.
As the song pleads, could we just be broken together?
So it's true, as the voice from the back seat so boldly (but snarkily) proclaimed...Jesus did die for our sins. But if Jesus' death means saving us from our sins - it first means joining us in our brokenness.
Because the only way to last forever...is broken together.
That was the question my wife heard from the back seat of the car one day when our son was about 6 years old.
After stumbling through a few attempts at explaining how some people didn't like what Jesus said and did, and how bad people sometimes are mean to good people, she was interrupted by the voice from the backseat - now brandishing a rather know-it-all tone...
"Mom...I think it was so he could die for our sins."
From then on she knew the best response to those kinds of questions was, "Go ask your father."
Only I don't have a very good answer. To this and many questions like it.
Someone once said something like, "The more we learn, the more we know we don't understand." That is certainly the case with issues of God, faith, religion, and theology. It's kind of like cleaning the kitchen...as soon as you start you begin to find grease and dust and little bits of crumbs in places you forgot were there.
Riding in the back seat of the car my son was apparently musing on one of these crumbs of theology that he had heard in Sunday School, or from his preacher father (kids soak up what they hear even when they're playing with dinosaurs under the pews in church). Somehow the idea with which he quizzed his mother had been planted in his brain as an unequivocal truth: Jesus died for our sins.
It's not that it's untrue, but (contrary to popular religious thinking) it's not the whole truth - or the only truth.
If anybody other than my (at the time) 6 year old son and me ever think about these things, they probably think that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins or to endure the penalty that should be born by us. The fancy term for this is substitutionary atonement.
But I don't like it...because it's cold and calculating - not at all like the God who gathers her children under her wing like a hen with her chicks or like God in Jesus who had compassion for the crowds because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
This week, a couple of days after Easter, I stumbled across an explanation of why Jesus had to die that is much more meaningful to me.
I thought of it while listening to a song by the group, Casting Crowns, called Broken Together.
Obviously the song is about marriage, struggles, and reconciliation.
I have no idea if the songwriters or Casting Crowns had any intention of shedding light on the shared relationship between God and creation when they produced this song. But it perfectly captures how God embraces brokenness for the sake of sustaining a bond of love with us.
I have come to know that love is experienced most deeply in the midst of struggle, pain, and grief. We don't come to truly know one another by sharing vast tomes of knowledge or by accomplishing great feats of strength together. Neither does independence or individualism cause us to care for and deeply love another person. Only through shared tears, sleepless nights, heartache, and blood do we become one.
This is the ultimate truth of Christ crucified. God doesn't require a payment from creation for its sins. God doesn't seek one who will be penalized on behalf of humanity. Rather, God knows that reconciliation and deep love comes in sharing the pain of life and death.
As the song pleads, could we just be broken together?
So it's true, as the voice from the back seat so boldly (but snarkily) proclaimed...Jesus did die for our sins. But if Jesus' death means saving us from our sins - it first means joining us in our brokenness.
Because the only way to last forever...is broken together.
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