calling the good work of the Holy Spirit evil and, in Her name, calling the evil conceived in the hearts and minds of men—good.

I retired from service through no preference of my own. I no longer have an audience, and I assume the Spirit prefers it. But if I may relieve the heart and mind of even one person damaged by subservience to these lies that kill imagination, condemn experience, and enslave peace of mind to dumb dogma, I am pleased!”

• • •

’Saved’ is an interesting concept, isn’t it?

Well, ‘saved’ is an interesting concept, isn’t it? First, Cliff had to convince me that his god loved me. Then, he needed to convince me that god was very disappointed in me for crimes I had no part in but was complicit in because of the transference of certain body fluids that created me. And, finally, while god could not stand to have me in his [sic] presence because of my complicity in these crimes, I could be—by praying an apparently magic prayer— ”hidden in Christ” (think, Jesus), very close to god (not precisely with), so that god would not have to look at me. So I could, in that way, spend an eternity with this god who didn’t like me.

But after, I found this narrative horribly unsettling, and for good reason. While I didn’t have a name for it until then to ascribe to the presence I knew, I had my experiences of being entirely accepted and cared for by an invisible but tangible and tactile presence of sweetness and goodwill toward me. This new information, articulated by Cliff that I am ‘loved’ but not liked by a deity who found me disappointing, challenged my childlike worldview of a safe, benevolent cosmos in which I lived, albeit based entirely on my experience, to a reality far more malevolent. I was no longer safe.

• • •

PSAT “calmly considered.”

(PSAT. Penal substitution (sometimes, esp. in older writings, called forensic theory) is a theory of the atonement within Christian theology, which declares that [Jesus] voluntarily submitting to God the Father’s plan, was punished (penalized) in the place of sinners (substitution), thus satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive sins making us at one with God (atonement). It began with Luther and continued to develop with the Calvinist tradition as a specific understanding of substitutionary atonement, where the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ death is understood in the sense of a substitutionary fulfillment of legal demands for the offenses of sins. —Wikipedia.)

The confusion overwhelmed me as I tried to reason through this conflict that lasted many years. All those who, I reasoned, must know far better than I since I lacked education or religious history endorsed “penal substitutionary atonement theory (PSAT).” Christian Fundamentalism tells the story something like this:

One day, Jesus goes to his Father, saying, “I know how disappointed you were and how badly your feelings hurt they didn’t exactly do what you said in the garden. And I hear you when you reason you could not simply forgive them for what they did because that would not satisfy your sense of justice. After all, as your guy Paul wrote, “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23)

But the thing is, I really feel bad for them, and I just think there ought to be some way to let them back in our good graces. I mean, I Love them because I am them. So, I’ve been thinking. To satisfy your need to be right about the justice thing, I mean, how bout’ if I were to die in their place? I ought to be a worthy sacrifice, being your one and only son, right? It would fit right into your whole sacrifice and blood motif, like temple sacrifice and the blood of the lamb on the doorposts, right?” Father says, “Maybe you are onto something here. But it would have to be a really gruesome death. Some walk-in-the-garden variety sort of suffering won’t satisfy. I want actual blood and fear and tears of agony and guts.” Jesus said, “I can do that.” So, they struck the deal, and the rest is a very creative history.

• • •

A biblical literalist in defense of PSAT would be quick to point out the number of times in the new testament letters alone that PSAT is affirmed. True enough. A simple, not at all thorough, search for “Blood of Jesus” in the letters reveal eight instances of the blood of Jesus as the substitutionary atonement for our sins (Hebrews 2:14, 9:12-14, 12:24, 13:20-21, 1Peter 1:2, 1 John 1:7, Ephesians 2:13).

But I am not a literalist. I don’t suffer the delusion of inerrancy, and as I engage the bible with an adult faith, I understand I am reading the opinion of the author, not the opinion of god.

The letters, read in their context, reveal the theocracy in which the authors were born and raised. Many were Hebrews, or, in Paul’s case (who may have written most of the letters), to use his words, “a Hebrew of Hebrews,” and a Pharisee, a sect who promoted strict obedience to the law of Moses, including the temple as the dwelling place of YHWH. At the heart of second-temple worship was the concept of atonement (achieving the forgiveness of god for not being perfect) through blood sacrifice. Blood sacrifice was not native to the Hebrews but was common practice among other cultures with whom they interacted; including the Egyptians, Canaanites, Syrians, Greeks, and Romans. The authors brought with them from their Jewish roots the notion of the atoning blood sacrifice—they certainly didn’t get it from the teaching of our good Rabbi—and applied it post-humosly to Jesus some 20-50 years after his murder.

Another simple search you might do, Pass, is how many times the words “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” or something similar appear in the Bible. I counted 32 hits in a simple search. I especially love the ones that say She never asked the Hebrews for sacrifices. If She never asked, then I guess they made it up or absorbed it from other cultures. Pass, She never endorsed sacrifices as atonement for sin. Not with sheep and goats, and certainly not with the body and shed blood of Jesus!

What remains of Judaism and Christianity
…if sacrifice is removed?

• • •

The damage done by those who distorted Her truth and maligned Her character with the lie of penal substitutionary atonement theory is immeasurable. And all to promote the agenda of patriarchy. I recall N.T. Wright said, “While there may be ten different atonement theories you could legitimately identify in the crucifixion of Jesus, PSAT is not one of them.” I could not agree more.

The ‘substitutionary’ death of Jesus is their stake in the ground. This immovable stone anchors the theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement that has maligned our Rabbi, his Father, and his teaching and impeded the mental, physical, cultural, and economic welfare of the Great Spirit’s Lovers.

Complete bunk. It has no truth; it is horrible anthropology and, even worse, lethal child psychology! If loved but not liked, children grow up unlikeable. You raise a child with the knowledge they are inadequate no matter what they do to try to prove you wrong; they grow up angry and unforgiving. Children are mirrors. They mirror what those they trust reflect back to them. How much more with the children of god? If I am repugnant to the object of my adoration, my older self regards others as lacking as I find myself.

Given your history, Passerby, I would like you to read ‘Surprised by Hope’ by N.T. Wright about PSAT.

• • •

Did He Have to Die?

Asks Passerby.

I hear in your question an old tape stuck in ‘Loop’ mode from which it seems impossible to extricate ourselves sometimes. When I invited one of my older palliative care students—who was a Southern Baptist preacher—to articulate for me his theology of suffering, death, and dying. He replied, “I only know one theology: Jesus came to die for my sins so that I could go to heaven.” In this way, the life and teaching of Rabbi Jesus is all about death, isn’t it? But he was all about life. He had almost nothing to say about life after life. His message about the arrival of the ‘kingdom’ was about life now, not later.

• • •

You would do well, Pass, to put the question of who killed Jesus to rest. It wasn’t the Jewish people. It was the same religious and political domination systems—the religious and political elite—that were oppressing the Jewish people who killed him….and they would do it all over again today. They killed him because he was a genuine threat to their control of the Jews.

No. Jesus did not have to die. However, given the gifting of the Prophet—the antagonist to the religious—and his vocation as a Messiah, his murder was probably unavoidable. His Apostles tried to deter him. They warned him they planned to kill him if he went to Jerusalem, and he went anyway.

There was nothing on his Father’s part that compelled it. But for Jesus, it was far better to be killed than to keep silent. For him, the Great Spirit’s community on earth was worth dying for. The religious, political, and economic status quo would never allow ‘freedom for the captives’ (Isaiah 61), and he was not afraid to die. He chose to risk being killed to make his Fathers’ point: a very brave man.

No, Passenger, our divine parent, the Father of Jesus, our Holy Mother, the Great Spirit, did not send him to die for our sins. Jesus died because of the sins of the religious human-kind. He died at the hands of those who rejected Her Love. It really is as simple as that.