This being Good Friday, let’s talk about the Atonement.
It’s fashionable these days for progressive
Christians to distance themselves from the Atonement - the idea that Jesus had
to die on the cross in order to spare us from judgment. I am one of those progressives: for years, I have followed Matthew Fox’s inspired
lead by questioning this basic construct: that Jesus acted like an older brother, stepping
between a violently abusive father and a helpless child, taking on a punishment
meant for us.
One common way this theory gets expressed is in terms of
the slave economy of Jesus’ time: Jesus “redeemed us” – he “bought us out of
slavery” by paying the price in his blood.
Yet another gruesome image is the blood of the Passover lamb: on the
night before Moses was to lead his people out of slavery, God sent the
angel of death to kill the first-born children of the Egyptians. The
Jews were instructed to paint their doorposts with the blood of a slaughtered
lamb – this was the signal for the angel of death to “pass over” that house as
it went door to door killing the Egyptian children. Just so, the blood of Jesus, symbolically poured
over us in baptism, protects us from eternal death.
Whichever way you tell it, God comes across as a psychopathic
killer, a murderous slave holder, a genocidal child-killing demon of the night. Anyone in their right minds, we think, would
rightly reel from these horrifying images.
And of course, this theory of the atonement
becomes an easy target for critics of Christianity: what kind of psychopathic God
would kill his only Son in order to appease his wrath? I am
always taken aback by the smirky confidence of “new atheists” who trot out these
arguments – they are like so many college sophomores, convinced that Christians must
be either blinded by their faith or too stupid to see the horror of these
metaphors.
Anyway, for the entire length of my 25-year career
as an Episcopal priest, I’ve taught my congregants to look at these disturbing
images with a critical eye, and I’ve offered the insights of Matthew Fox and
the great Christian contemplatives as a healthy corrective to this line of
thinking. But much to my surprise, a new
insight has caused me to wonder if I’ve been a bit too hasty, maybe throwing out the baby with the bath
water.
Imagine the worldview of those who, in Jesus’ day,
took all that we find horrifying about these images of God for granted, as
simply true. From their point of view, the
world was a brutal and violent place;
God’s justice was enforced by gruesome
violence, and if God was to be just, violence was necessary. God’s brutality was not only on display in
the actions of the King and Temple police, it was on display in every storm and drought, leaving
entire nations vulnerable to famine and disaster. It was on display in the dozens of lepers and
cripples covered in dirt at the village gate, clearly being punished
for some kind of sin; it was on display, in a world without insurance, in every
random accident that left prosperous families destitute, forcing mothers into prostitution
and children into slavery.
In those
days, a slave economy was considered perfectly normal – there was no
anti-slavery movement calling it into question.
Wars were fought with ferocious brutality; rape and pillage, slavery and
grisly death happened all the time, and could only be explained – indeed, could
only be endured – when seen as the inscrutable actions of an ultimately just and
good God.
In other
words, what we see as a psychopathic, murderous God, the people of Jesus’ day saw
simply as reality. That’s just the way
God was. Anyone who thinks that they
would have thought differently if they had lived in those days is simply
arrogant and foolish.
And then, in the space of a generation, an unbelievable revolution of paradigms occurred, and everything changed.
The amazing thing about the Atonement is not that
it presumes a psychopathic God - that was considered normal; it’s that it proclaims, with incredible joy,
that those days were over! That as much as
that brutal idea of God made sense before Jesus died and rose from the grave, that idea of God was now obsolete! A new reality
had broken through! The curtain in the
Temple, separating God from the world, was torn in two! God could finally be seen as alive and active on the side of mercy and
forgiveness and love!
Sometimes we progressives get so caught up in
criticizing the conventional images of God that we
overlook the message that the theory of the Atonement was proclaiming, which is,
Hey, let it go! Those days are
over! There’s a new reality now! As
much as it may seem like we’re in bondage to sin, slaves to corruption and
death, that’s no longer the case! We're free now! As
much as it might seem like God is out to hurt us, that’s no longer the
case! He's on our side! As much as it might seem like our
suffering is God’s will, that’s not true! God is on the side of
the victim! As much as it might seem like death has the
last word, we now know better! Life has conquered death! As
much as it might seem like God is on the side of a murderous dictator, we now see that God is on the side of a righteous, persecuted minority! God is on the side of the
outcast! God is on the side of everyone who suffers! That old God we were carrying around - if "he" ever lived - is gone for good! Now we see the truth: God is Love! Mercy! Forgiveness! Abundant, joyful new life!
In other words, grow up! Get over yourself!
By constantly getting stuck on how horrifying and
obsolete those ancient ideas of God are, we act like grown children still
blaming our parents for whatever mistakes they made in raising us. We distract ourselves from the new life that
is right in front of our faces. We
collude in distracting ourselves from the new life that is right here. We much prefer to argue with
that old paradigm; we'd rather fight with a God who no longer exists than awaken to
the real message of the Atonement, which is that an entirely new experience of
God is available to us.
From this new perspective, brutality,
violence, slavery, and murder can be seen for the horrifying things that they
are. Ironically, it’s
the theory of the Atonement that proves its own obsolescence. By helping us imaginatively identify
with this new understanding of God, as revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Atonement stories ultimately reveal how obsolete those old images of
God are. By taking seriously the
Atonement, we’re able to identify a new face of God; a God of non-violent,
unconditional love; a God that we now find alive and well and dwelling within each of
us.
And that, I think, is pretty cool. However we got here, here we are, At One with God. That's literally what Atonement means: At-One-ment.
But don't get me wrong: I’m not saying I’m going to start preaching the
Atonement in an uncritical, Biblically orthodox way. But as I meditate on the message of the cross,
I can’t help but be filled with a new respect for just how radical this message
must have seemed at the time, and how radical it continues to be.
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