Jesus Christ - Did God kill Jesus?: searching for love in historys most famous execution

To Courtney, who saved me

God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, by making
peace through the blood of his cross.

St. Paul the Apostle

I SAT IN a mountain lodge one weekend with two hundred junior high students. Wed embarked on three days of wholesome fun and getting jazzed on God.

I was twenty-four. A part-time youth pastor working my way through seminary, Id taken a job at an evangelical church near campus. I had driven a vanload of students into the Southern California mountains for a winter weekend at the denominations retreat center. We met up with busloads of kids converging from several churches in the region, and the air was laden with anticipation, no doubt driven as much by hormones as spiritual curiosity. Such is evangelical youth ministry.

On Friday, the highly touted and charismatic speaker for the weekend gave a talk in the evening chapel service that endeared him to all of the kids. He told funny stories about himself in middle school and how nerdy he was, and he set himself up as a credible authority on spiritual matters.

Then, on Saturday night, he brought the heat.

He told us a long, detailed story about a poor peasant woman in Russia who lived with her toddler daughter in a dismal, Soviet-era apartment. They had a horrible life, he told us, but at least they had each other.

Then, one night as they were sleeping, the shoddy Communist construction gave way during an earthquake, and the building collapsed on top of them. The mother was pinned beneath a huge piece of concrete. Miraculously, the young girl was unharmed, but they were both trapped in the rubble, with no way of escape.

A day passed, but no one came to their rescue. The little girl began to grow weak, and she complained to her mother that she was hungry and thirsty.

Another day passed, and the mother began lapsing in and out of consciousness. She knew that her young child would die of dehydration soon if she didnt do something.

On the third day, the mother realized that she was going to have to make a sacrifice for her daughter. So she reached out for a piece of broken glass, and she slashed open her palm and directed her daughter to drink her blood in order to survive.

The girl did as she was told, and she was rescued. The mother died.

We were on the edge of our seatswhat love the mother had to sacrifice herself for her daughter! Who doesnt want to be loved like that?

Now the speaker was worked up into a metaphorical lather, and his voice rose as he addressed the assembled eleven- and twelve-year-olds, turning the rhetorical corner from the Russian mother to Jesus. Jesus is like that Russian mother, he told us, and we are the helpless little girl. Jesus blood on the cross saves us the same way that the daughter was saved.

Then the speaker explicated at length the ancient practice of execution by crucifixion. He went into excruciating detail about the pain of having spikes pounded through your wrists and ankles, about the enormous amount of blood, about the humiliation of hanging, naked, six feet in the air, and about how death comes slowly and agonizingly, not by blood loss, but by suffocation.

We heard about the extreme agony, even desperation, felt by a victim of crucifixion as he pulled himself up on the spikes in his arms and pushed himself up on the spikes in his legs to catch a breath until, completely exhausted, he couldnt rise anymore. Unable to inhalecoughing, choking, dying.

Now our speaker was screaming, sweating, spitting.

Thats how much Jesus loves you! he cried.

He died for you in the most horrible, gruesome manner that the Romans could imagine! And as he died, he saw your face! He whispered your name! Because you are a sinner, he had to die in your place!

God hated you because of your sin! When he looked at you, all he saw was your sin!

But Jesus stood between you and God, so now when God looks at you, he only sees Jesus.

Tonight, you can accept what Jesus did for you and go to heaven instead of hell when you die. You can let Jesus stand between you and the terrifying, holy God.

Tonight you have the chance to drink the blood from Jesus hands to save yourself.

And the next part I remember verbatim. He concluded, If tonight, for the first time, youve decided to accept what Jesus did for you, angels are celebrating in heaven; stay after chapel to pray with a counselor. If tonight youve decided to recommit your life to Jesus, angels are dancing and cheering; you should also stay after and talk to a counselor.

And if you arent ready to do either of those things, you are dismissed. Theres popcorn and hot chocolate for you in the dining hall.

There are, of course, numerous problems with what happened that night, not least of which is using popcorn as a consolation prize for eternal life. The emotional manipulation of that talkand the thousands of similar talks given to millions of kids over the past several decades of American youth ministryis inexcusable. If the way that a person gets into heaven has to do with a spontaneous, fear-driven, adolescent decision, then the Christian faith is no more than a desperate sales pitch.

This speaker had the opportunity to woo kids into a life with God. He could have told about how God came to Earth to walk among us, about the amazing miracles that Jesus performed, healing the sick and raising the dead. He could have wowed us with the love of God. Instead he terrified us.

But what really troubled me about that night was the guilt. Jesus blood was on our hands. According to this guy, these middle schoolers killed Jesus because they were born into sin, and God hated them for it.

Lets think about this evangelists message to those preteens: The God who created you, presumably out of love, now cannot stand so much as to look at you. You disgust God. And the only reason God doesnt explode in rage every time he sees you is because Jesus has stepped in between you two. All God sees is Jesus, not you. We cower in fear behind Jesus, and God fumes with anger on the other side. What happened to the loving Russian mother who loves her daughter so much she sacrifices her own life? How did a story of a loving mom morph into a loving son who saves us from a wrathful heavenly Father?

Believe it or not, this is a fairly common framework for understanding what Jesus did on the cross. But it certainly does not fit cleanly with everything scripture tells us about God, Jesus, or the crosssuch as how do we go from God is love and God sent his only Son for us because God so loved the world to God is so disgusted with us that he has to kill Jesus so that he can pretend to see only Jesus when dealing with us. Surely we have taken a wrong turn, because this story is supposed to be about love.

Not long ago, I was in the same position as that speaker, addressing a room of mostly middle schoolers and their parents. Id been invited to speak to the confirmation class of a large Lutheran congregation, and the youth pastor said I should talk about the book that I was working on. That happened to be this book. So after some warm-up jokes, I asked the assembled crowd how many of them had ever been told, Jesus died for your sins. As expected, every single person raised a hand.