The Myth of Jesus Dying Just So You Can Go to Heaven

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. For many Christians, we are currently in the midst of Holy Week, a sacred period of time from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday where we walk the way of the cross and meditate on Jesus’ final days before his passion, death, and resurrection. There are a lot of ways to understand the meaning of this sacred time and what Christians believe about what Jesus did on the cross. The most common is the idea that on the cross Jesus died to pay the debt for our sins so that we could go to heaven. But, once you start digging into Scripture and theology, you discover that this concept is only one small part of the meaning of the death of Christ on the cross. So, this week on Christian Mythbusters, I’d like to try to break the myth that Jesus died so you can go to heaven, because it’s about so much more than that. The fancy theological term for what God in Christ did on the cross is called the theory of atonement. And what I described above is one way of understanding it, something known as the satisfaction theory of atonement. The problem, though, is that Western society has understood this primarily through a legal and juridical lens, which obscures the more ancient understanding of the work of Christ. Think about it this way, if God is good and has created a good creation, then when there is wrong and injustice, something must be done to make that right. It’s one thing to think Jesus died so God will forgive you for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but isn’t that rather anemic when it comes to the work of the creator of the universe? Instead, because of something that is broken within us since our earliest existence, humanity has wounded God’s creation, we have wounded one another. And just waving a hand and saying all is forgiven in the legal court doesn’t work… in particular, it isn’t fair when you consider some of the atrocities and horrors humanity has wrought. When Jesus died, it wasn’t to satisfy the wrath of an angry God (remember, Jesus is God!), it was to begin to heal what you and I broke through sin and violence and injustice. And it was to begin that healing not by waving a hand and saying we all get a “Get out of jail free, card”, but instead choosing to experience the worst of what we as humans could do. Christ carried all the brokenness of the human condition into the heart of God to begin healing it. So, in a few days, when we get to Good Friday, we will see the result of our own complicity in sin and violence in this world, either through our action or our inaction. And we will see that God doesn’t abandon us, but chooses to suffer the results of our sins, chooses to suffer with the marginalized and oppressed and wounded, thereby reconnecting them with the very heart of God. If it’s just about you and me going to heaven, there is a whole broken world and creation that will be lost. But if it’s about God healing all of humanity and all of creation, then this is about you and I being a foretaste of that healing, of being an amuse-bouche, if you will, of the love of God… and letting that love change us, so that, through God’s power, we begin to make right the things that are broken. Stick with me because next week, I’ve got a couple other ways of looking at this I’ll share with you. Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.