An entry in the online forum “LunaticOutpost.com”:<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what I understand from Christians, I am \u201cborn in sin.\u201d And then, every little thing that I have ever done wrong is added up and, no matter what kind of good I do in this life, this will add up to me being so irredeemably bad that I will have to burn in eternal torment forever.<\/p>\n
And there is nothing I can do to make it okay with God. Except this one thing. Which is to have Jesus save me.<\/p>\n
But the thing is this: Either their God is a very, very, very unloving, unkind person, or else this is [he uses a stronger word than \u201cbaloney\u201d].<\/p>\n
There is nothing I have ever done that a reasonable person would not, if I asked, forgive me for, and I can prove it.<\/p>\n
I have forgiven EVERYONE. A bit more than a year ago … I made the choice to consciously and [literally] forgive every single person that has ever directly or indirectly, consciously or unintentionally caused me any hardship or pain. It wasn\u2019t always easy to do, but I eventually did it.<\/p>\n
Doing this has changed my life in some amazing ways. I feel profoundly liberated. I am without the anger and hatred that used to plague me. So that was cool.<\/p>\n
But it makes me think: I cannot be \u201cbigger\u201d than God. Surely! I would not send a single soul to hell, if it were up to me. I would try to show them why they should transform. Why they should learn compassion.<\/p>\n
I would do all that and I am just a normal guy on planet earth who has had a few decades to work things out as best he can. I am not the eternal all-knowing creator of all things. Who, I would think, would be a bit more wise and loving than me.<\/p>\n
So the bottom line is this: God is more than me. More love, more compassion, more wisdom, more understanding, more everything. If God cannot forgive more than I can, then that is not God we are talking about. So God can forgive me and I don\u2019t need to have someone die for my sins.\u201d<\/p>\n
The person had given their essay this title: \u201cI don\u2019t need Jesus and neither do you. REALLY.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is an interesting argument, but does it hold up? Is my forgiving someone the same as what God does? As a mere man, can I forgive Hitler for the millions of murders he committed? Certainly I could forgive him for what he had done to me personally, but what would I be doing in that case? When I forgive, I am letting someone off the hook, but I am not really dealing with the underlying offense.<\/p>\n
God has to do this, because he is holy. And his holiness is what human can\u2019t really grasp. This is why we still need a savior. We need Jesus. REALLY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An entry in the online forum “LunaticOutpost.com”: \u201cFrom what I understand from Christians, I am \u201cborn in sin.\u201d And then, every little thing that I have ever done wrong is added up and, no matter what kind of good I do in this life, this will add up to me being so irredeemably bad that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1161,527,3600,2721,4624,105],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}