Posted by Ginny Tosken on March 21, 1999 at 18:23:50 {MWyyC89S7ssMg}:
In Reply to: *Just Thinking posted by MK on March 21, 1999 at 13:59:32:
Adam sold himself out, and all his descendents. The price he received was liberty, or freedom of choice, thinking he could live without the source of energy. Of course he was wrong.
He already had free will. How did he receive liberty? Liberty from what? According to the Bible, if he did sell himself out, wasn't it into slavery and bondage? This metaphor just makes no sense to me.
When I try to forget all the Christian overlays and read Genesis with an open mind, I cannot condemn Adam and Eve for what they did. If God was their father, was it so horrible for them to want to be wise like him? Don't most children aspire to be like their parents?
Does knowing both good and evil mean being evil? All of us have seen both good and evil in our lives. Most of us choose good. Could not have Adam and Eve chosen the same?
Did God intend for us to be in a childlike state of moral dependence forever? Or would there have come a day when Adam and Eve would have been given permission to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
As mentioned, Adam sold us out and not Jehovah. Adam took upon himself to decide for all of us what our life would be and none of us can change that regardless of how hard we try.
This seems O so fair. Even humans have come up with the idea of abolition, ending the cycle of slavery. Where is the god who prefers mercy to sacrifice?
Why did someone else have to die to pay the price is beyond my understanding. I know the bible says why, but why it had to be I don't know. Maybe someone else can answer that.
It is beyond my understanding, too. How does the painful death of one's own son atone for whatever mistake Adam made? What kind of being would require this? And how is it a true sacrifice if the person only dies temporarily?
However I think that Jesus' sacrifice is somewhat different than that of a child being offered in sacrifice. In the case of children, they weren't asked if they wanted to, but if any adult wishes to offer himself in sacrifice that's his own decision. So I think Jesus voluntarily and willingly paid the price for us according to eye for eye principle. That's why it happened when he was in his thirties.
So voluntary adult human sacrifices are okay and not a barbaric ritual? I guess those Aztecs weren't so bad after all:
The immense task of nourishing the gods, especially Huitzilopochtli, produced a constant demand for sacrificial victims. The Aztecs solved this problem by establishing the Xochiyaoyotl, or "flowery war." Unlike wars of conquest, its sole purpose was to take prisoners from conquered peoples in order to sacrifice them to the sun. This war was more like a tournament between the warriors of Tenochtitlan (the Aztec capital) and its neighboring cities in the Valley of Puebla-Tlaxcala. All enemy warriors caught by the Aztecs were sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli. Likewise, those Aztec warriors caught by the other cities were sacrificed to the god of each individual city's choice. In this manner, the Aztecs fulfilled their responsibility to Huitzilopochtli as well as all of the other gods (Davies, 96).
As the name suggests, the "flowery war" was not a hostile affair between the cities and warriors involved. In fact, all of the participants on both sides saw it as an honor to take part in it and did so willingly.
Ginny