Atonement as Seen from My Cell

(originally written April 18, 2008)

Atonement, as seen from a prison cell at 5am.

If Jesus "had to die", then we just had to kill him.
Yet if we had to kill him, we credit ourselves for having saved ourselves from sin.
If we saved ourselves, we have no use for God.
No. It is not like this.
Crucifixion is not atonement; it is murder. Let it not be otherwise.

The great fault in our use of the Gospels is that we have been deluded into believing that an innocent must die so that we might be saved.

And we have continued in that delusion 2,000 years.

And in every war in our world we play out that delusion over and over:
That the innocent must die so we are "saved."

So we should not rejoice that Jesus "died for us."
No, let us admit: Jesus died because of us.

Let us not pat ourselves on the back.

The sin of the world was not so great that we had no option but to kill him, that Jesus had to be sent to die.

No. Innocent blood serves nothing. It is only loss.

Rather, the sin of the world was so great that Jesus had to be sent--to live among us, and teach us again how to love; our ideas of love, God, and reconciliation had become so tortured and wrong.

And our sin was so great that we killed love's teacher, we killed Love.

No. Crucifixion is only an affront to God. Not a peace offering.
We must never forget this.

Resurrection on the other hand, now, that's Atonement.
That is picking up the pieces of the broken Christ, healing in order to heal the world and not destroy it, to forgive;

Only God could choose this.
We did not force God's hand in this;
We did not help God save us.
We were not secretly counting on resurrection,
Only execution.

Resurrection and its healing is not what we deserved for our deed, but what God chose to do, for us.

Crucifixion is what Jesus did not deserve.

Resurrection welcomes us back as forgiven children, though we were once convicted murderers. It is not Death Row, but New Life. Our past is not to be forgotten but we still must take joy in the Great Forgiveness.

No, we must never forget the Crucifixion.
We must never pat ourselves on the back for it.
Must never declare it necessary
or any other rationalization of our deed.
We must not blame God for our fault.
We must instead recognize that God chose to love us, Despite.

Resurrection is the great surprise and cause for celebration.

And we must never forget, there are plenty of people in the world today
who do not deserve to die
but we believe we have to kill them
for some greater glory, for collateral damage.
They are right to see themselves in the
crucified Christ and to see Christ in themselves.
They are witness to the whole human depravity.
God speaks to them hope of Resurrection
But we should not find ourselves comforted.

But we go on destroying the innocent
Crediting ourselves for saving ourselves
Blaming God and the victims for their deaths
Why is love so hard to learn?