Now we turn to the second
very important article of Christian faith. I must clarify however that
all Christians do not believe exactly in what follows. Even some Church
leaders have deviated from the stiff dogmatic attitude of the Church.
Even so, the philosophy of ‘Sin and Atonement’ is a fundamental
principle of orthodox Christian faith.
The
first component of the Christian understanding of Sin and Atonement is
that God is just, and exercises natural justice. He does not forgive
sins without exacting retribution; as it would be against the dictates
of absolute justice. It is this particular attribute of God that makes
necessary the Christian version of atonement.
The
second component is that man is sinful because Adam and Eve sinned. As a
result their progeny began to inherit sin, as if it was infused into
their genes and, ever since, all children of Adam are born congenital
sinners.
The third
component of this dogma is that a sinful person cannot atone for another
person’s sins; only a sinless person can do so. Based on this, it
becomes evident why, according to Christian understanding, no prophet of
God, however good or near perfection he may have been, could have
cleansed the mankind of sin or was able to rid them of it and its
consequences. Being a son of Adam, he could not have escaped the element
of congenital sin with which he was born.
This is a simple outline of the entire doctrine. Here is the solution advanced by Christian theologists.
To
solve this apparently unsolvable problem, God conceived an ingenious
plan. It is not clear as to whether he consulted his ‘Son’ or if they
both conceived the plan simultaneously or even if it was entirely the
idea of the ‘Son’, and then accepted by God the Father. The features of
this plan unfolded at the time of Christ as follows. Two thousand years
ago the ‘Son of God’, who literally shared eternity with Him, was born
to a human mother. As the ‘Son of God’, he combined within him the
perfect traits of a human being as well as those of God the Father. Next
we are told that a pious and chaste lady by the name of Mary, was
chosen to be the mother of the ‘Son of God’. She conceived Jesus in
partnership with God. In that respect, being a literal ‘Son of God’,
Jesus was born without sin, yet somehow he retained his human character
and entity. Thus he volunteered himself to take the burden of the entire
sin of those of mankind who would believe in him and accept him as
their saviour. By this clever device, it is claimed, God did not have to
compromise His eternal attribute of absolute justice.
Remember that according to this modus operandi,
man would not go unpunished, however sinful he may be. God would still
be able to exact retribution from the sinful without compromising His
sense of justice. The only difference between this and the previous
position, which was responsible for this dramatic change, is the fact
that it would be Jesus who would be punished and not the sinful sons and
daughters of Adam. It would be the sacrifice of Jesus which would
ultimately be instrumental in atoning for the sins of the children of
Adam.
However strange
and bizarre this logic may seem to be, this is exactly what is professed
to have happened. Jesus volunteered himself and was consequently
punished for the sins he had never committed.
Let
us re-examine the story of Adam from the beginning. Not a single step
in the above doctrine can be accepted by human conscience and logic.
Firstly,
we have the idea that because Adam and Eve sinned, so their progeny
became genetically and eternally polluted with sin. In contrast to this,
the science of genetics reveals that human thoughts and actions, be
they good or bad, even if persistently adhered to during the entire
lifetime of a person, cannot be transferred to and encoded into the
genetic system of human reproduction. A lifespan is too short a period
to play any role in bringing about such profound changes. Even the vices
of a people, generation after generation, or good deeds for that
matter, cannot be transferred to the progeny as genetic characters.
Perhaps millions of years are required for etching human genes with new
characteristics.
Not
only this, even if by a most absurd and unacceptable extension of one’s
imagination one could conceive of such a bizarre happening, the contrary
will have to be accepted by the same logic. This would mean that if a
sinful person repented and came out clean at the end of the day, then
that act should also be recorded in the genetic system; effectively
cancelling out the effect of the previous sin. Scientifically this may
not happen, but certainly there is far more logic in this balanced
picture than imagining that it is only the propensity to sin which can
be genetically encoded and not the disposition to do good.
Secondly,
by attempting to resolve the problem of Adam by proposing that sin is
genetically transferred to the future generations of Adam, all that has
been achieved is the total demolition of the very foundation on which
the Christian doctrine of ‘Sin and Atonement’ is based. If God is
absolutely Just, then where is the sense of justice in eternally
condemning the entire progeny of Adam and Eve for the transient sin they
committed and repented? A sin for which they themselves were heavily
punished and driven out of heaven in such disgrace. What manner of
justice would it be for God, who even after having more than punished
Adam and Eve for their personal sins, still did not have His passion of
revenge abated until He had condemned the entire human race to a
helpless degradation of being born as congenital sinners? What chance
did the children of Adam have to escape sin? If parents make a mistake
why should their innocent children suffer for that mistake eternally?
That
being so, again what distorted sense of justice does God claim to
possess and to enjoy, to punish a people who are designed to act
sinfully, however much they abhor sin? Sin is made a part and parcel of
their mechanism. There is no chance any more for a child of Adam to
remain innocent. If sin was a crime, then logic demands that it should
be a crime of the Creator and not that of the creation. In that case,
what justice could require the punishment of the innocent, for the
crimes of the perpetrator?
How different from the Christian understanding of sin and its consequences is the proclamation of the Holy Quran, which says:
Compared to the Christian concept of Sin and Atonement these declarations of the Holy Quran are pure music to the soul.
Let
us now turn to the Biblical account of what actually happened at the
time of the sin of Adam and Eve and the consequences that ensued the
punishment. According to Genesis, God accepted their apology only
partially and an eternal punishment was meted out to them, prescribed as
follows:
To the woman
he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain
you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband
and he will rule over you.’
To Adam he said, ‘Because you
listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
‘You must not eat of it,’ ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful
toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns
and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By sweat
of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since
from it were you taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’ (Genesis
3:16–19)
Mankind existed long
before Adam and Eve came to be born. Western scientists themselves
discovered the remains of many a prehistoric man and labelled them under
different distinctive titles. Neanderthal man is perhaps the most
widely known of them. They lived between 100,000 to 35,000 years ago,
mostly in the regions of Europe, Near East and Central Asia. A carcass
of a fully developed human being has been discovered, who happened to
roam the earth about 29,000 years before Adam and Eve are known to have
begun their short lived sojourn in paradise. At that time, human beings
were physically just like us and lived in Europe, Africa and Asia, and
later during the Ice Age they spread to the Americas as well. Again in
Australia, the authentic cultural history of Aborigines is traceable up
to 40,000 years ago.
Compared
to these relatively recent times, a skeleton of a female from Hedar in
Ethiopia has been discovered which is 2.9 million years old. Now
according to the Biblical chronology, Adam and Eve lived around six
thousand years ago. One may look back in wonderment at the reported
history of human beings, or Homo Sapiens as they are titled in
scientific jargon.
Having
read the Biblical account of how Adam and Eve were punished, one cannot
help wondering if the pain and throes of labour were unknown to woman
until the beginning of the era of Adam and Eve. A scientist will be hard
to come by, who believes in such fantasies. Again, we have plenty of
irrefutable evidence that man, long before Adam and Eve, had occupied
all the continents of the world, even remote Pacific islands and had
always laboured hard to survive. Therefore, to say that Adam and Eve
were the first to commit a sin and because of that, painful child birth
was ordained as punishment, is totally proven wrong by the study of
life. Even animals, who are much lower in the order of life, give birth
in pain. If one watches a cow giving birth to a calf, her suffering
seems similar to the pain of a human female. Many such animals, we know,
inhabited the earth millions and millions of years before Adam and Eve.
To earn ones
livelihood with labour is common to man, but not distinctive at all.
Women also labour for their earnings and livelihood. Before that, every
specie of life earns its livelihood through labour. This fact is the key
motivator in the evolution of life. The struggle for existence is
perhaps the very first distinctive mark of life which separates it from
the world of the inanimate. It is a natural phenomenon, with nothing
whatsoever to do with sin.
Again,
if this be the punishment prescribed as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s
sin, then one wonders what would happen after Atonement? If Jesus
Christ atoned for the sins of the sinful human beings, was the
punishment prescribed for the Sin abolished after the Crucifixion? Did
those who believed in Jesus Christ as the ‘Son of God’, if they were
women, cease to have painful childbirth? Did the believing men start
earning their livelihood without exerting manual labour? Did the
propensity to sin cease to pass on to the future generations and
innocent children started being given birth to? If the answer to all of
these questions were to be ‘yes,’ then of course there would be some
justification in seriously contemplating the Christian philosophy of Sin
and Atonement. But Alas, the answer to all these questions are no, no
and no. If nothing seems to have changed since the Crucifixion, both in
the Christian and non-Christian worlds, then what would be the meaning
of Atonement?
Even
after Jesus Christ the sense of common justice continues to dictate to
human beings all over the world that if any person commits a sin,
punishment of that sin has to be given to that person alone and to none
else. Every man and woman must suffer the consequences of their sins by
themselves. Children are always born innocent. If this is not the truth
then God’s attribute of Justice is thrown overboard.
We
as Muslims believe that all divine books are based on eternal truth and
none can make any claims contrary to that. When we come across
inconsistencies and contradictions in any so called divinely revealed
book, our attitude is not that of total denial and rejection but that of
cautious and sympathetic examination. Most of the statements of the Old
Testament and the New Testament, which we find at variance with the
truth of nature, we either try to reconcile by reading some underlying
cryptic or metaphoric message, or reject part of the text as the work of
human hands rather than that of God. While Christianity itself was
true, it could not have contained any distortions, unacceptable facts or
beliefs giving a lie to nature. That is why we started not with the
textual examination but with the fundamentals themselves, which through
centuries of consensus have become indisputable components of Christian
philosophy. Rudimentary among them are the Christian understanding of
Sin and Atonement. I would much rather believe that someone, somewhere
during the history of Christianity, misunderstood things and tried to
interpret them in the light of his knowledge and misled the following
generations because of that.
Let
us suppose for the sake of argument that Adam and Eve sinned literally
as described in the Old Testament, and were duly punished. As the story
goes, the punishment was handed out not only to them but to their entire
progeny. Once that punishment was prescribed and delivered, why was
there the need for any other punishment at all? Once a sin has been
punished, it is done with. Once a judgement has been passed, no one has
the right to continuously add more and more punishments. In the case of
Adam and Eve it is not only that they were severely reprimanded and if
anything more than punished for the sin they had committed, but also the
nature of the punishment which was extended to their progeny in itself
is highly questionable. Of that we have said enough. What we are
attempting to point to is a far more heinous violation of absolute
justice. To be punished continuously for the sins of our forefathers is
one thing but to be compelled to continue to sin as a consequence of
one’s forefather’s error is simply abominable.
Let
us get down to the hard realities of human experience and try to
understand the Christian philosophy of crime and punishment in relation
to our everyday experience. Let us suppose a judgement is passed against
a criminal, which is far too severe and harsh in proportion to the
crime committed. That could, of course, lead to loud and severe
condemnation of such a gross disproportionate penalty by every sensible
man. In view of this, we find it very difficult to believe that the
penalty imposed on Adam for his sin, came from a Just God. It is not
just a case of an out of proportion penalty. It is a penalty, that
according to the Christian understanding of God’s conduct, outlived the
life span of Adam and Eve and was extended generation after generation
to their progeny. For the progeny to suffer for the punishment of their
parents is actually an extension of the violation of justice beyond its
ultimate limits. But we are not talking of that either. If we had the
misfortune to observe a judgement passed by any contemporary judge,
making it compulsory for the children, grand children and great grand
children, etc. of a criminal to be coerced by law to continue to sin and
commit crimes and be punished accordingly till eternity then what would
be the reaction of contemporary society, which has acquired a universal
sense of justice through civilisation?
In
the fifth century, Augustine the Bishop of Hippo, was involved in a
confrontation with the Pelagian movement, concerning the controversy of
the nature of the fall of Adam and Eve. He proclaimed the Pelagian
movement as being heretical because it taught that Adam’s sin affected
only himself and not the human race as a whole; that every individual is
born free of sin and is capable in his own power of living a sinless
life and that there had even been persons who had succeeded in doing so.
Those in the right were labeled as heretics. Day was denounced as night and night as day. Heresy is truth and truth heresy.
Let
us now re-examine the theme that God does not forgive the sinful
without punishing them because it is against His sense of justice. One
is horrified to realise that for century after century Christians have
believed in something which is most certainly beyond the grasp of the
human intellect and contrary to human conscience. How on earth, or
heaven for that matter, could God forgive a sinful person merely because
an innocent person has volunteered himself to take the punishment
instead? The moment God does so, He violates the very fundamental
principles of justice. A sinful person must suffer for his sins. In
short, a multitude of complex human problems would arise if the
punishment is transferred to someone else.
It
is argued by Christian theologians that such a transfer of punishment
does not violate any principle of justice, because of the voluntary
acceptance by the innocent person of the other person’s punishment. What
would you say in the case of a debtor, they ask, who is overloaded with
debts beyond his capacity to pay and some God fearing philanthropist
decides to relieve him of his burden by paying his entire debts on his
behalf? Our answer would be that indeed we would loudly applaud such an
act of immense generosity, kindness and sacrifice. But what would be the
reaction of the person who confronts us with such a question, if the
debt payable runs into trillions of pounds sterling and there steps
forward a philanthropist who takes out a penny from his pocket,
demanding that all that is due to the debtor should be cancelled out
against that kindly penny offered as a substitute for that debt. What we
have in the case of Jesus Christ offering himself to be punished, for
the sins of all humanity, is far more grotesquely unproportionate.
Again, it is not only one debtor or all the debtors of one single
generation, but we are talking about billions of born and unborn
defaulters extending up to Doomsday.
But
that is not all. To conceive of crime as only a debtor who owes money
to someone else is the most naive definition of sin that I have ever
come across. This scenario which has been presented deserves to occupy
our attention a little longer before we turn to some other aspects of
crime and punishment.
Let
us consider the case of a debtor called A, who owes a hundred thousand
pounds to person B. If a rich philanthropist, in full command of his
senses, seriously and genuinely wants to relieve the debtor of his
burden, the common law would require him to pay to B all that person A
owed him. But suppose the hypothetical philanthropist steps forward with
the plea that person A should be absolved of his responsibility of
payment to person B and instead he himself should be beaten up a little
bit or imprisoned for three days and nights at the most, in his place.
If it really happened in real life it would be a treat to watch the
horrified faces of the astounded judge and the confounded poor creditor
B. But the philanthropist has yet to complete his plea for clemency. He
would further stipulate: ‘O my lord, that is not all I want in return
for my sacrifice. I require all the debtors of the entire kingdom alive
today or to be born until the end of time to be absolved of their dues
in return for my suffering of three days and nights.’ At this point
one’s mind boggles.
How
one wishes to propose to God, the Just God, that at least those who had
been robbed of the fruits of their labour, or of the savings of their
lives should have been compensated to some degree at least. But the
Christian God, it seems, is far more kind and clement to the criminal
than to the innocent who suffer at the hands of the criminal. A strange
sense of justice indeed which results in the forgiveness of robbers,
usurpers, the abusers of children, the torturers of the innocent and the
perpetrators of all sorts of beastly crimes against humanity, provided
that they believe in Jesus Christ in their dying moments. What of the
incalculable debt they owe to their tormented victims. A few moments of
Jesus in hell seem sufficient to purge them of their long lives of
unpunished heinous guilt, generation after generation.
Let
us now consider a different, more serious, category of crime, the
consequences of which human nature simply cannot accept to be
transferable. For instance, someone mercilessly abuses a child and even
rapes and murders it. Human sensibilities would no doubt be violated to
an unbearable degree. Suppose such a person continues to cause similar
and greater suffering all around him without ever being caught and
brought to justice. Having lived his life of crime unpunished by human
hands, death closes in upon him but he determines to elude even the
greater punishment of the Judgement Day and suddenly decides, at last,
to have faith in Jesus Christ as his saviour. Would all his sins
suddenly melt into nothingness and would he be left to glide into the
other world free of sin like a new born babe? Perhaps such a one who
defers his belief in Jesus till the time of death proves to be much
wiser than the one who does so earlier in life. There always remained
for the latter a danger of committing sins after belief and falling prey
to the devils designs and insinuations. Why not wait till death is
close upon you giving the devil little chance and time to rob you of
your faith in Jesus? A free life of crime and pleasure, here on earth,
and a rebirth in an eternal state of redemption is no mean bargain
indeed.
Is this the
wisdom of justice that the Christians attribute to God? Such a sense of
justice or such a God himself is totally unacceptable to human
conscience, which He Himself created, without, alas, being able to
discriminate right from wrong.
Looking
at the same question in the light of human experience and human
understanding, one has every right to denounce this philosophy to be
meaningless and without foundation. It has no reality or substance.
Human experience teaches us that it is always the prerogative of those
who suffer at the hands of others, to forgive or not to forgive.
Sometimes governments, to celebrate a day of national rejoicing or for
other reasons, may declare an amnesty to criminals without
discrimination. But that does not in itself justify the act of pardoning
those who have done some irreparable harm and caused perpetual
suffering to their fellow innocent citizens. It should be remembered
that if the act of indiscriminate pardon at the hands of a government
can by any measure be justified and if this is not considered by
Christian theologians as a violation of the sense of justice then why do
they not extend the same courtesy to God and concede to Him the right
of forgiveness as and when He so pleases? After all, He is the Supreme
Sovereign, the Creator and Master of everything. If He pardons anyone
for any crime that may have been committed against fellow beings, the
Supreme Master has the unlimited power to compensate the aggrieved so
generously as to make him perfectly satisfied with His decision. That
being so where is the need for the sacrifice of His innocent ‘Son’? This
in itself constitutes a mockery of justice. We are born attuned to the
attributes of God. He so declares in the Holy Bible:
This tenet, common to
both Christian and Muslims alike, requires that human conscience is the
best reflective mirror of God’s conduct in a given situation. It is a
matter of every day experience with us that many a times we forgive
without having violated the sense of justice in the least. If we are
wronged personally, then in respect of the crime committed against us we
can go to any length in forgiveness. If a child hurts his parents by
being disobedient or by causing damage to some precious household
article, or by earning them a bad name; he has sinned against them. His
parents may forgive him without their conscience pricking them or
blaming them for having violated the sense of justice. But if their
child destroys the property of their neighbour, or injures the child of
another person, how could they decide to forgive the child for causing
suffering to others? It would be deemed an act of injustice even
according to their own consciences if they did so.
Crime
and punishment have the same relationship as cause and effect, and they
have to be proportionate to some degree. This aspect of the
relationship between crime and punishment has already been discussed at
some length with regards to financial misconduct of one man against
another. The same argument applies with greater severity to other crimes
like injuring, maiming or murdering innocent citizens or violating
their honour in any manner. The greater the enormity of the crime, the
more severe one would expect the nature and extent of punishment to be.
If God can forgive all and sundry, as I do believe that He and only He
can, then the question of Atonement in exchange for punishing an
innocent person does not come into play at all. If, however, it is a
question of the transference of one criminal’s punishment to another
innocent person who has opted for such a measure, then justice would
most certainly demand that the punishment must be transferred in its
entirety to the other person, without decreasing or diluting it to any
degree. Again of that we have already said enough.
Do
the Christians believe that this dictate of justice was applied in the
case of Jesus the ‘Son’ by God the Father? If so, it means that all the
punishment due to all the criminals of the Christian world born at the
time of Christ or ever afterwards till Judgement Day was amassed,
concentrated and brought to an infernal intensity of such a degree that
the suffering of Jesus Christ for merely three days and nights equalled
the torture of all the punishment which the above mentioned sinners had
earned or were to earn till that last day. If so, no Christian should
ever be punished on earth by any Christian government. Otherwise, that
would be tantamount to an act of gross injustice. All that the courts of
law should do after reaching the verdict of guilty would be to ask the
Christian criminal to pray to Jesus the ‘Son’ to save him. And the
matter should be rested and brought to a close there and then. It would
simply be a case of book transfer of criminal’s account to that of Jesus
Christ.
For the sake
of illustration let us bring the United States of America into sharper
focus and zoom in on the state of crime there. The crimes of mugging and
murder are so widespread that it is difficult to keep a count of them.
Once I remember in New York, I tuned in to a radio station which was
devoted entirely to the reporting of capital crime. It was a most
horrifying experience. It was so painful that half an hour was the
maximum I could take it, no more. Almost every five minutes a new murder
was committed in America and was reported, sometimes with grisly
coverage by reporters who were actually witnessing the very murder in
progress. It is not our intention to present a detailed picture of crime
in America, but it is a matter of common knowledge that today America
stands among the foremost in the list of countries where of all sorts of
crime are rampant; particularly in larger cities such as Chicago, New
York and Washington. In New York, mugging is common place along with the
maiming of innocent citizens who dare to resist it. This daily
occurrence creates a most obnoxious picture of mutilation and murder for
paltry gains.
Leaving aside for the moment,
the rising trend of crime throughout the world, in the case of America alone,
one cannot fail to wonder about the relationship between the Christian concept
of Sin and Atonement with the crimes committed daily. However much removed
they may be from Christian value in their practice, at least this much goes
to their credit that they do believe in the Christian doctrine of Sin and
Redemption and also in Christ as their saviour—alas—to what avail. The majority
of the criminals in America, of course, are so-called Christians. Though
Muslims and others are no exception. Just because all such criminals who
belong to Christianity and believe in the reported voluntary sacrifice of
Jesus Christ for the sake of the believing sinners, would they all be pardoned
by God? If so in what way? Ultimately, a sizeable percentage from among them
may get caught and get punished by the law of the land, but still a large
number would either remain unapprehended or may only be punished for a part
of the crimes which they may have committed over many years.
What would Christianity
offer to those who are punished by law and what would it promise those
who remain unapprehended here on earth? Will both be punished to varying
degrees or will they be punished indiscriminately?
Another
dilemma relating to a criminal’s redemption because of his belief in
Jesus Christ arises out of a less clear and undefined situation. If, for
instance, a Christian commits a crime against an innocent non-Christian
victim, he would be forgiven of course because of the blessings of his
faith in Jesus. The punishment of his crime will then be transferred to
the account of Jesus instead. But what would be the profit and loss
statement of the poor innocent non-Christian victim. Poor Jesus and the
poor victim, both being punished for a crime they did not commit.
One’s
faculties are confounded if we try to imagine the enormity of all the
crimes ever committed by humanity since the dawn of Christianity till
the time when the sun of existence sets on human life. Have all these
crimes been transferred to the account of Jesus Christ, peace and
blessing of Allah be upon him? Have all these sins been accounted for in
the small space of three days and three nights that Jesus is supposed
to have suffered? Still one keeps on wondering, how could the vast sea
of criminals so intensely embittered by the deadly poison of crime be
sweetened and cleansed entirely of the effects of their crimes by the
mere act of their believing in Jesus. Again, one’s thoughts are carried
back to the remote past, when poor Adam and Eve so naively committed
their first crime only because they were very cunningly duped and
ensnared by Satan. Why was their sin not also washed clean? Did they not
have faith in God? Was it a minor act of goodness to have faith in God
the Father and was it their fault anyway that they had never been told
of a ‘Son’ living eternally with God the Father? Why did not the ‘Divine
Son’ take pity on them and beseech God the Father to punish him for
their crimes instead? How one wishes that had happened, it might have
been so much easier to be punished only for that one single faltering
moment on the part of Adam and Eve. The entire story of humanity would
certainly have been rewritten in the book of fate. A heavenly earth
would have been created instead and Adam and Eve would not have been
banished eternally from heaven, along with the untold number of their
unhappy progeny. Jesus alone would have been banished from heaven merely
for three days and three nights and that would have been that. Sadly,
neither God the Father nor Jesus, thought of this. Look how Jesus’ holy
lovable reality is unfortunately transformed into a bizarre and
unbelievable myth.
Sin and Atonement (continued)
Justice and Forgiveness
The
Christian philosophy of Crime and Punishment is not only utterly
confusing for simple unprejudiced human intellect but also raises many
other relevant questions which are no less perplexing. The relationship
between justice and forgiveness, as maintained by the Christian
philosophy of Atonement, attempts to explain why God Himself could not
forgive. It is dependant entirely on an erroneous and arbitrary concept
of justice, which takes it for granted that justice and forgiveness can
never go hand in hand. That being so, why does the New Testament place
so much emphasis on forgiveness when the question of human relationships
is discussed. I have never read in any divine scriptures of any world
religion a teaching that leans more one sidedly upon, and overly
emphasises the role of forgiveness. What a fantastic contrast with the
traditional emphasis on justice found in Judaic teachings. An eye for
eye; a tooth for tooth. That is justice, pure, simple and unattenuated.
What a dramatic departure from this to the Christian teaching of turning
the other cheek if slapped on one. Who gave the latter teaching that is
against the earlier teachings of the Torah? Was the first teaching of
Torah, one is left wondering, a teaching by God the Father as against
the diametrically opposed teaching of the New Testament, a teaching by
Christ the ‘Divine Son’? If so, why did the ‘Divine Son’ differ so
drastically from his Father? Should such a conflict be taken as a
genetical defect or an evolutionary change or was this Christian
attitude of absolute forgiveness, as diametrically opposed to the Judaic
emphasis on revenge, an example of volte-face change on the part of God
the Father. He seems to have dearly repented of what He had taught
Moses and the people of the Book and wanted very much to redress His own
wrong.
As Muslims, we
observe this fundamental shift in emphasis and see no contradiction
because we believe in a God who combines in Him both the attributes of
justice and forgiveness, without there being any inner conflict between
the two attributes. We understand the transfer from Judaic teachings to
that of Jesus Christ, not as a corrective measure of those teachings but
of their misapplication by the Jews. With us, God is not only Just but
is also Forgiving, Merciful and Beneficent. If He so desires, He does
not stand in need of any outside help to forgive the sinful. But from
the Christian point of view the problem acquires gigantic proportions.
It appears that the God of the Torah was a God who knew only justice and
had no sense of compassion or mercy. Apparently He was unable to
forgive, however much he may have desired to do so. Lo, then came to His
help ‘God the Son’ and extricated Him from His infernal dilemma. It
seems that the ‘Son’ was ‘All-Compassion’ as against the
‘All-Vengefulness’ of his Father. It is not just the apparent absurdity
of this vision of the ‘Son’ which disturbs the human conscience but it
also raises the question once again of the contradiction in their
characters. Jesus does not appear to be a true son of his Father. A
genetic error again perhaps.
Another
important area of inquiry is the attitude of other religions of the
world towards sin and its consequences. Christianity is of course not
the only religion to be a revealed religion. Numerically, non-Christians
largely exceed Christians. Thousands of years of the known history of
man, before Jesus Christ, saw many religions born and take root in
different human soils in various parts of the world. Do these religions
ever speak of a philosophy of forgiveness even remotely related to the
Christian dogma of Atonement? What is their concept of God, or Gods if
they have now begun to believe in many? What is their concept of God’s
attitude towards sinful humanity?
Among
the comity of religions, the nearest to Christianity is perhaps
Hinduism in this regard, but only partially so. Hindus also believe in
an Absolute Just God, whose sense of justice demands that He must punish
somehow every perpetrator of sin. But the resemblance ends there. No
mention of a ‘Divine Son’ taking the entire consequences of the whole
world of sinners upon his shoulders is even remotely indicated. On the
contrary, we are told of an endless chain of crime and punishment in an
endless number of reincarnations of the soul into animal flesh.
Atonement only becomes accessible after the many times reincarnated soul
has incurred punishment exactly in accord with the sum total of the
crimes it committed during all its fateful experiences of reincarnation.
To some it may sound weird and bizarre indeed, but there is certainly
some inherent justice in this philosophy. A balance and a symmetry which
is in perfect harmony with the concept of absolute justice.
Leaving
Hinduism and other religions who also believe in the philosophy of
reincarnation with all its complexities of cause and effect aside, what
is the role of forgiveness on the part of God in the remaining major or
minor religions of the world? All such religions and over a billion
adherents of religions such as Hinduism seem to be totally ignorant and
uninformed of the myth of Atonement. This is very perplexing indeed. Who
was in communion with mankind elsewhere in the history of religions? If
it were not God the Father as in Christian doctrine, was the entire
religious leadership of the world except Jesus Christ, pupil of the
Devil himself? And where was God the father? Why did He not come to the
rescue when the rest of mankind was being led astray by the Devil in His
name? Or were they, the rest of the humanity, a creation of a being
other than the so-called God the Father. Again, why were they treated in
such a step-fatherly way and abandoned to the cruel sway of the Devil?
Let
us now turn our attention to this issue with reference to common human
experience. It can be shown that forgiveness and justice are balanced
and can coexist and do not always contradict each other. Sometimes
justice demands that forgiveness must be extended and sometimes it
demands that forgiveness be withheld. If a child is forgiven and is
encouraged to commit more crime, then forgiveness is itself bordering on
a crime and is against the sense of justice. If a criminal is forgiven,
only to perpetrate more acts of crime and creates suffering all around
him because he is forgiven and encouraged, that would also be against
the dictates of justice and will be tantamount to an act of cruelty to
other innocent citizens. There are countless criminals of this type who
are covered by the atonement of Jesus. That in itself is contrary to
justice. But if a child repents, for instance, and the mother is
convinced that the same crime will not be repeated, then to punish the
child would be counter to the sense of justice. When a repentant person
suffers, that in itself is a punishment which may in some cases far
exceed a punishment imposed from outside. People with a living
conscience always suffer after committing a sin. As a consequence, the
cumulative effect of the repeated pangs of conscience reaches a point
where it may result in God taking pity on such a weak, oft-faltering,
oft-repenting servant of His. This is the lesson in the relationship of
justice to forgiveness, which people of high intellect or even people of
ordinary understanding draw alike from a universal human experience. It
is high time that Christians woke up from their dormant state of
accepting Christian dogma without ever questioning its wisdom.
If
they re-examine Christian doctrine in the light of common sense and
reasoning, they may still remain good practising Christians but of a
different and more realistic type. They would then believe even more and
with greater love and dedication in the human reality of Christ as
compared to the Christ who is a mere figment of their imagination and no
more real than fiction. Jesus’ greatness lies not in his legend but in
the supreme sacrifice of Jesus the man and messenger. A sacrifice which
moves the heart far more powerfully and profoundly than the myth of his
death upon a cross and his revival from the dead after spending a few
ghastly hours in hell.
Last
but not least, how could Jesus be born innocent when he had a human
mother? If the sin of Adam and Eve had polluted the entire progeny of
this unfortunate couple, then as a natural consequence, all male and
female children must inherit the same genetic propensity to sin. Females
were perhaps more likely to because it was Eve who as the instrument of
Satan enticed Adam. Therefore, the responsibility of sin falls squarely
on the shoulders of Eve rather than of Adam. In the case of the birth
of Christ, obviously it was a daughter of Eve who contributed the major
share. The question that very powerfully arises is whether Jesus
inherited any gene bearing chromosomes from his human mother or not. If
he did so, then it was impossible for him to escape the inevitable
inherited sin. If he did not inherit any chromosomes from his mother
either, then indeed that birth would be doubly miraculous. Only a
miracle could produce a son who neither belongs to his father nor to his
mother. What remains incomprehensible is why those chromosomes,
provided by Eve, did not carry the innate tendency to sin to the child
Jesus. Suppose it happened somehow, and Jesus had that innocence needed
to carry the sins of mankind, on condition that they believed in him and
not otherwise, another problem would arise: what happened, one may ask,
to the progeny of Adam and Eve that died before the dawn of
Christianity? How many billions of them might have got scattered
throughout the world over five continents generation after generation.
They must have lived and died without hope or even the possibility of
ever hearing about the Christ their Saviour who was not yet born. In
fact the entire humanity between Adam and Christ seemed certainly to be
doomed for ever. Why were they never given even a remote chance to be
forgiven? Would they be forgiven retrospectively, by Jesus Christ? If
so, why?
In other parts
of the world, much larger by comparison to the tiny land of Judea,
where people had never heard of Christianity even during the life time
of Jesus Christ, what happens to them? They never did, nor ever could,
believe in the ‘Sonship’ of Jesus Christ. Will their sins go unpunished
or will they be punished? If they go unpunished, for what reason? If
they are punished, again by what logic? What chance did they have
anyway? They were totally helpless. What a distorted sense of absolute
justice!
Now
let us turn to the act of the Crucifixion itself. Here we are
confronted with another insoluble dilemma. Jesus, as we are so
insistently told, offered himself voluntarily to God the Father and was
made the scapegoat for the sins of all humanity, provided, of course,
they believed in him. But when the time of acceptance of his wish
approaches nigh and at last the glimmer of hope for sinful humanity is
beginning to appear like the dawn of a new day, as we turn to Jesus
expecting to observe his joy, his happiness and his ecstasy at this most
eventful moment of human history, how profoundly disappointed and
manifestly disillusioned we are. Instead of finding a Jesus impatiently
awaiting the hour of jubilation what we see instead is a Jesus weeping
and crying and praying and beseeching God the Father to take away the
bitter cup of death from him. He severely reproached one of his
disciples when he caught him in the act of dozing off after spending
such a fateful long day and suffering through a dark gloomy night which
bade ill for him and his holy master. The Biblical account of this
incident goes as follows:
Then
Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gesthemane, and said to
them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the
two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and
troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to
the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little
farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My father if
it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will but as
you will.’
Then he
returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Could you men not
keep watch with me for one hour?’ he asked Peter. ‘Watch and pray so
that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the
body is weak’.
He went a second time and prayed,
‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink
it, may your will be done.’ When he came back, he again found them sleeping
because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and
prayed the third time, saying the same thing. (Matt 26:36–43)
Alas as the Christian story
unveils itself, the prayers and beseeching of neither Jesus nor his
disciples were accepted by God the Father and willy-nilly, despite his
strong protestations, he was at last crucified. Was he the same person,
the same prince of innocence and paragon of sacrifice who so bravely
volunteered himself to take the burden of all of mankind’s sins on his
shoulders, or was it a different person? His conduct, both at the hour
of the Crucifixion and during the Crucifixion itself, strongly casts
shadows of doubt, either on the identity of Jesus Christ or on the truth
of the myth spun around his person. But of that later. Let us now
return to our critical examination where we left it.
Some
other questions which arise from the last cry of agony by Jesus Christ
are as follows: Who uttered those deeply pathetic and touching words?
Was it Jesus the man or was it Jesus the ‘Son’?
If
it was Jesus the man who was abandoned, by whom? And why? If we accept
this option, it would also have to be taken for granted that till the
last, Jesus the man retained a single independent identity which could
think and feel freely and individually. Did he die at the moment of
parting of the soul of Jesus the ‘Son of God’ from the body of the man
he had occupied? If so, why and how? If it was so and it was the body of
the man which died after the soul of God deserted it, then the question
would arise as to who got revived from the dead when the soul of God
revisited the same body later on.
Again,
this option would lead us to believe that it was not Jesus the ‘Son’
who was suffering but the person of Jesus the man who cried out in such
agony and he was the one who suffered while Jesus the ‘Son’ looked on in
a state of total indifference and apathy. Then how can he justify the
claim that it was he, the ‘Son’, who suffered for the sake of humanity
and not the man in him?
The
other option is that we presume it was Jesus the ‘Son’ who cried out,
while the man in him, perhaps hopeful to begin a new life for himself,
watched on in uncertain expectancy of the realisation that along with
the sacrifice of Jesus the ‘Son’, he, Jesus the man, whether he liked it
or not, would also be slaughtered on the altar of his innocent
cohabiter. What sense of justice ever motivated God to kill two birds
with the same stone is perhaps another mystery.
If
Jesus the ‘Son’ it was, and it was him indeed according to the general
consensus of Christian churches, then the second question arising out of
the answer of the first would be about the identity of the second party
involved in that monologue of Jesus (Matt 26:39,42). We have two
options open to us.
One,
that the ‘Son’ was addressing the Father, complaining that he was
abandoned in the hour of need. This inescapably leads us to believe that
they were two different persons who did not coexist in a single
mutually merged personality, equally sharing all attributes and putting
them into play simultaneously with equal share. One appears to be the
supreme arbiter, the all powerful possessor of the ultimate faculty of
taking decisions. The other, the poor ‘Son’, seems to be entirely
deprived or maybe temporarily dispossessed of all the domineering
characters which his Father enjoyed. The central point which must be
kept in focus is the fact that their opposite wills and wishes nowhere
seem more at odds and at variance with each other than they were during
the last act of the Crucifixion drama.
The
second question is, would these two distinct persons, with individual
thoughts, individual values and individual capacities, feel pain and
agony if they were ‘two in one’ and ‘one in two’? So another question
would require many a long dialogue between theologians regarding the
possibility of God being able to suffer pain and punishment. Even if so,
only half of God would suffer while the other half was incapable of
doing so by design or by the compulsion of His nature. As we proceed
further in the shadowy world of this twisted philosophy, light begins to
get dimmer and dimmer and we find confusion heaped upon confusion.
Another
problem is that whom was Christ addressing if he was God himself? When
he addressed his father, he himself was an inseparable part of the
Father, so we are told. So what was he saying and to whom? This question
must be answered with a free conscience, without resorting to dogma. It
becomes a dogma only when it cannot be explained in human terms.
According to the Biblical statement, when Jesus was about to give up the
ghost, he cried addressing God the Father: ‘Why have you abandoned me?’
Who had abandoned whom? Had God abandoned God?
The
other problem we have to take note of is that the man in Jesus was not
punished, nor by any logic should he have been punished because he had
never opted to carry the load of humanity’s sin. This new element,
entering into the debate, leads us to a very peculiar situation which we
have not considered before. One is compelled to wonder about the
relationship of the man in Jesus with the inherited propensity to commit
sin, common to all the progeny of Adam and Eve. At best one can bring
oneself to believe that in the duality of the ‘Divine Son’ and the man
occupying the same body, it was only the ‘Divine Son’ who was innocent.
But what about the man living alongside him. Was he also born out of
genes and character provided by God? If so, then he should behave like
the divine in Jesus and no excuse would be acceptable if he goes remiss
in this or that, with the plea that he only did so because he was a man.
If there was nothing of God in him, that is, in the man in Jesus, then
we must concede that he was simply an ordinary human being, perhaps half
a human being. Yet that human person, amalgamated with Jesus, has to be
human enough to inherit the disposition to sin. If not, why not?
Obviously
there is no gain in saying that being a man distinctly separate from
his divine partner, he must have sinned independently with the entire
responsibility of sin upon his human shoulders. This scenario will not
be complete without presenting Jesus the ‘Son of God’, dying, not so
unselfishly after all, for the sake of humanity but his prime concern
might have been for his half brother, the man in him.
All
this is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to digest
intellectually. But from our point of view there is no problem. It was
the innocent person Jesus the man, without there being any duality in
him, who uttered this cry of astonishment and agony.
Let
me once again make it clear that I do not disbelieve in Jesus but have
profound respect for him as a messenger of God with exceptional
sacrifices to his credit. I understand Jesus to be a holy man, going
through a period of great trial. But as the narration of the act of
Crucifixion begins to unfold and come to a close we are left with no
choice but to believe that Jesus did not volunteer himself for death
upon the cross. The night before the day his enemies attempted to murder
him by crucifixion we hear him praying all night, along with his
disciples, because the truth of his claim was at stake. It is said in
the Old Testament that an imposter who attributes things to God which He
had never said, would be hanged on a tree and die upon it an accursed
death.
But a prophet who
presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say,
or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.
(Deuteronomy 18:20)
And if a man has committed a crime
punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his
body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same
day, for a hanged man is accursed of God. (Deutronomy 21:22–23)
Jesus knew that if this happened,
the Jews would celebrate with ecstasy and proclaim him to be an imposter whose
falsehood had finally been proved beyond a shadow of doubt on the authority
of the divine Scriptures. This was the reason why he was so anxious to escape
the bitter cup of death; not out of cowardice but out of fear that his people
would be misled and would fail to recognise his truth if he died upon the cross.
All night he prayed so piteously and helplessly that to read the account of
his agony and misery is heart rending. But as this real life drama proceeds
to a close, the climax of his emotional distress, dejection and hopelessness
is fully displayed in his last cry: ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachtani?’—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?’1
One must notice that it
was not agony alone expressed in that cry but obviously there was
mingled with it an element of surprise, bordering on horror. After he
was brought back to consciousness, with the help of some of his
dedicated disciples who applied to his wounds an ointment they had
prepared before Crucifixion and which contained all the ingredients
needed for mitigating pain and healing wounds, he must have been so
wonderfully and happily surprised and his faith in a loving true God
would have been reinstated and revitalised in a manner seldom
experienced by man in its intensity and boundlessness.
The
fact that the ointment had been prepared in advance constitutes a
strong proof that Jesus’ disciples were indeed expecting him to be
delivered from the cross alive, very much in need of medicinal
treatment.
From the
above, it becomes comfortingly clear that the concept of Inherited Sin
and of Crucifixion are based only on the conjecture and wishful thinking
of Christian theologians at a later date. It is quite likely that it
was born out of some pre-Christian myths of a similar nature, which,
when applied to the circumstances of Jesus Christ, tempted them to read
close similarities between the two and create a similar myth. However,
whatever the mystery or paradox, as we see it, there is no evidence
whatsoever that the Christian philosophy of Sin and Atonement was based
on anything which Jesus might have said or done or taught. He could
never have preached anything so contrary to, and so diametrically
opposed to human intellect.
Coming
to the nature of the ‘Son’, we cannot believe that he was thrown into
Hell Fire, as that would mean an internal contradiction with himself.
Returning to the basic concept of Christianity. It is said that God and
the ‘Son’ are two persons but of the same nature and substance. It is
impossible for one to go through an experience while the other does not
share in it. How can we believe that one aspect of God, the ‘Son’, was
being tormented, while God the Father remained unscathed. If he did not
suffer, it would be tantamount to breaking the Unity of God. Three
persons in one becomes even more inconceivable because the experiences
of each constituent of Trinity have turned out to be so different and
remote from each other that it appears impossible for one God to be in
the raging fire of hell, and at the same time the other to remain
perfectly aloof and untouched. There is no other choice for the
Christians of today but either to sacrifice the Unity of God and believe
in three different Gods, like the pagans of pre-Christianity such as
the Romans and the Greeks, or they remain true to themselves and believe
that God is one and as such, two aspects of God cannot undergo
contradictory states. When a child suffers, it is impossible for the
mother to remain calm and peaceful. She must suffer as well, sometimes
more than the child. What was happening to God the Father when He made
His ‘Son’ suffer the agony of three days in hell? What was happening to
God the ‘Son’? Was he divided into two persons, with two forms and
substances? One form suffering in hell and the other completely outside,
not suffering at all? If God the Father was suffering then what was the
need of creating the ‘Son’, when He himself could have suffered. So
this is a very direct question. Why did He not just suffer for Himself?
Why draw out such a difficult plan to resolve the problem of
forgiveness?
Here,
the question of hell to which, according to the Christian doctrine,
Jesus was confined to, should be examined more closely. What sort of
hell was it, was it the same hell we read about in the New Testament,
which says:
The Son of Man will send out his
angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and
all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt 13:41–42)
Before we proceed further,
it has to be very clearly understood what the New Testament means by the
punishment of fire or the punishment of hell. Is it a fire which burns
the soul or is it a carnal fire which consumes the body and thereby
tortures the soul? Do the Christians believe that after death we will
return to the same body which the soul left behind to disintegrate to
earth and ashes, or will there be a new body created for each soul and
the resurrected person would experience a sort of reincarnation?
If
it is carnal fire and a corporeal punishment, then one has to extend
one’s imagination to the limit of its tethers as to what may have
happened in the case of Jesus Christ. Before being subjected to the
Fire, was his soul re-imprisoned in the body of the man he had been
haunting all his life on earth, or was he somehow relegated to an astral
body? If the later is the case then that astral body would have been
beyond the reach of the carnal fire of hell to scorch, punish or
destroy. On the other hand if we accept the scenario that the body of
the man he had occupied would be reconstructed for Jesus as a sort of
medium through which he could suffer hell, then one cannot fail to
notice another blow done to the principle of divine justice. Poor man,
first of all he was practically hijacked for all his life by an alien
soul but then as a reward for the hospitality forced upon him he would
burn in hell for no crime of his own. The credit of his sacrifice being
totally monopolised by the alien occupant within him. Again, what about
the soul of that man or perhaps he did not have a soul of his own. If
not, then the man in Jesus and the God in Jesus had to be one and the
same person and the plea that Jesus acted sometimes by his human
impulses and sometimes by divine Will, is reduced to sheer hocus-pocus.
The only formula acceptable to any intellect is that one soul and one
body equals one person. Two souls and one body is a bizarre idea which
can only be entertained by those who believe in people being haunted by
ghosts or similar things.
If
the second option is more acceptable to the Christian Theologists in
that it assumes only the soul of Jesus to have entered hell and that
hell to be a spiritual hell. If so, there seems to be no reason why we
should reject this suggestion as nonsensical. However, the spiritual
hell is only created by pangs of conscience or a sense of guilt. In the
case of Jesus Christ, neither was applicable. When you accept the
penalty of another’s crime, being innocent yourself, it is not pangs of
conscience which are generated but quite the opposite. The soul of such a
person should vibrate with a sense of nobility and self-sacrifice.
Which would be tantamount to spiritual heaven rather than hell.
Now
we turn to the question of the body that was occupied by Jesus and the
meaning of death in relation to that body and also to the meaning of
revival in the same context. To the best of our knowledge the body of
Jesus Christ had to be an integral part of the ‘Sonship’ of Jesus.
Otherwise, he would have no common meeting ground left to him for his
divinity and humanity to merge upon and play distinctly different roles
under certain conditions. At times we should see the man taking charge
of affairs, provided he had a separate soul himself and at times we
should observe the Divine asserting Himself and controlling the man’s
faculties of head and heart. Again we emphasise that this can happen
only if there are two distinct personalities locked up in a single
being.
Having
clearly understood the different options regarding the relative roles
that the Divine and the Man in Jesus could have played, we try to
comprehend the application of the word ‘death’ and its full meaning in
relation to him.
If he
died for three days and nights, then death has to be understood in
terms of the soul having been severed from the body, and the soul
departing. Which means that the soul must depart the body and break off
its relationship so completely that only a very dead corpse is left
behind. So far so good. Jesus was at last relieved of his imprisonment
in the carnal body of a man. However, liberation from this imprisonment
should not be considered a punishment at all. The return of the divine
soul of the ‘Son’ to the same sublime state of existence cannot be
treated in any way like ordinary human death. Human death is fearsome
not because the soul leaves the body and severs the ties by gaining a
new consciousness, but the horrors of death are mainly on the account of
one’s permanently severing ties with many a dear ones left here on
earth, and leaving behind one’s possessions and different objects of
love. Many a times it so happens that a man who has nothing to live for
pefers to die rather than live an empty life.
In
the case of Jesus, the feeling of remorse could not have been present.
For him the window of death was open only in one single direction, that
of gain and not of loss. Why should his departure from the body be
considered an extremely pitiable and agonizing experience? Again, if he
died once and literally, not metaphorically, gave up the ghost, as the
Christians would have us believe, then returning to the same body is the
most unwise step attributed to him. Was he reborn when he returned to
the body that he had abandoned during the hour of death? If this process
is only to be described as revival or resurrection of Jesus, then the
body should also have been eternalized. But what we read in the Bible is
a completely different story. According to that story Jesus was
resurrected from the dead by entering the same body in which he had been
crucified and that was called his regaining of life. That being so,
what would be the meaning of the act of his abandoning the body once
again? Would that not be tantamount to a second death?
If the first departure from body
was death, then most certainly the second time he is considered to have abandoned
the human body, he should be declared eternally dead. When the soul abandons
the body first time, you call it death; when it returns to the same body, you
call it life after death. But what would you call it when the soul leaves the
same body once again never to return—will it be called eternal death or eternal
life according to the Christian jargon? It has to be eternal death and nothing
more. Contradiction upon contradiction. A very nerve wrecking experience indeed!
If it is suggested that
the body was not abandoned the second time, then we have the strange
scenario in which God the Father exists as an infinite incorporeal
spiritual being while the ‘Son’ remains trapped in the restricted
confines of mortal existence.
It
may be suggested that it is not always the pangs of conscience which
create a miserable state of mind and heart in those who are sensitive to
their faults. On the other hand, intense sympathy for the sufferings of
others may also create a life of agony for someone who is totally or
partially innocent of crime, but has that sublime spiritual quality of
suffering for the sake of others. That would also create a similitude of
hell. Mothers suffer for their ailing babies. The human experience
stands witness to the fact that sometimes for a permanently disabled
child the entire life of the mother is turned into a living hell. So why
cannot we concede to Jesus that noble quality of being able to suffer
for the sake of others? Why not indeed. But why only three days and
nights? Why not for his entire sojourn on earth and even before and
after that. Noble people do not suffer only temporarily for a very
limited period of hours or days. Their hearts do not rest in peace
unless they see misery mitigated or alleviated entirely. The hell which
we are considering, is not the prerogative of an innocent divine person
only, it is a noble quality shared to some degree even by the beasts of
the jungle for their near ones.
After
a few more remarks I will rest this case, but I have one other
important issue to briefly touch upon. The punishment prescribed by God
for Jesus Christ, only lasted for three days and three nights. While the
sinners for whom he was punished, had committed sins so horrible and
for so long that according to the Bible, their punishment was to be
eternal suffering in hell. So what sort of a just God was it that when
it came to the punishment of those created by Him, people who were not
His sons or daughters, they were to be punished eternally? But when it
came to the punishment of His own ‘Son’, for sins he had voluntarily
taken upon himself, suddenly the punishment was reduced. Only three days
and three nights. No comparison whatsoever. If this is justice then let
justice not be. How would God look at the conduct of human beings, He
has Himself created with His right hand, if they dispense justice as
they learnt it from Him? Applying different measures to their own
children and very different to those of others. Will God the Father
watch this loyal imitation with ecstasy or horror? Very difficult indeed
to answer.
As
far as the effect of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in relation to the
punishment of sin is concerned, we have already established that faith
in Jesus Christ has in no way reduced the punishment of sin, prescribed
by God, for Adam and Eve and their progeny. All human mothers still bear
their children with the pains of labour and it is still with labour
that man earns his bread. If we consider it from another angle, a broad
comparison between the Christian and non-Christian world since the time
of Jesus Christ. No believers in Christ can show a remarkable change, in
any period of history, of their women delivering their children without
pain and their men earning their bread without labour. They do not show
any difference in this regard in comparison to the non-Christian world.
As far as the
disposition to commit sins is concerned, the world of believers in
Christ compared with the world of non-believers do not record any
evidence that the dispensation to commit sin is totally obliterated
among the category of believers in Christ. In addition to this, one may
indeed wonder why having faith in God is considered so inferior to
having faith in His ‘Son’. This is especially relevant to the time
before this tightly kept, age old secret, (that God had a ‘Son’), was
disclosed to mankind. Of course there were people who had faith in God
and His Unity. Also innumerable people were born since Christ in every
religion and land of the earth, who believed in God and His oneness. Why
didn’t faith in God bear any influence on human crime and punishment?
Again why could not God the Father display that nobility of suffering
for the sake of sinners which His nobler ‘Son’ displayed? Most certainly
the Son seems to possess higher moral values (God forbid!) than his
less civilised Father. Is Divinity evolving and still in the process of
attaining perfection, one may ask.
REFERENCES
- Matthew 27:46
No comments:
Post a Comment