asaris

Interesting post, ravenradiodj. Unfortunately, I think it's riddled with errors of fact.
Have you ever read Hegel? This is quite similar to a bad reading of him. Not that that's an argument against your position, I'm just saying you might find him interesting.

Well, this is all true, as far as it goes. It's not God's power that makes him perfect; or rather, his power is only part of what makes him perfect. But you go on to say "In the Bible, God shows jealousy and anger, which are always based on fear." And this is simply false. Jealousy and anger can, and often are, based on fear. But they are also emotion which have their proper place. There are certain situations in which anger is appropriate, even morally required. There are even some situations in which jealousy is appropriate. And in none of these situations is the jealousy or anger motivated by fear; the phrase "Act always out of strength, never out of weakness" would not be a bad formulation of my moral code.

Well, of course God never changed. Most of this is something neither I nor any other traditional Christian would disagree with. I would take issue with the phrase 'mankind grew up emotionally'. Mankind does not grow up emotionally. We see an increasing development in the sophistication and subtlety of our concepts, but we all start out emotionally at step one. This is just confused. There is a difference between 'didn't sin' and 'couldn't sin'. Jesus could sin, but didn't. He was not at all an asexual teetotaler. We're told explicitly that he drank, and, while we're never told explicitly about his sex life, we know that he was "tempted in every way as we are", which must have included sexual temptations. You say later on "who never had any real human problems," but how can you say this? He was misunderstood by virtually everyone who knew him, even his closest friends. He was betrayed by one of his closest friends. All of his closest friends abandoned him in his hour of need. He had parents, who at times must have been frustrating to him, just as they are sometimes frustrating to us. Hardly. The notion that people sometimes do something wrong, and that when they do, they need to make up for it, has been around for 1000s of years, and with any luck will be around with us for 1000s more. The distinctly Christian notion is that life is not like a balance sheet, where the good things you do can balance out the bad things you do. You can't make up for the bad things you do; Kierkegaard uses the image of saying a spell backwards. That's why the sacrifice of Christ is necessary. Yeah, so do we. But doesn't this contradict your own point that Jesus didn't have any real human experiences?

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche