Here's something politically incorrect, but truly true:
Why do you sacrifice helpless lambs to assuage your guilt? What did the lambs do to deserve suffering and death?
Hypocrites ! If you feel guilty, pay for your guilt yourself. Don't add to your crimes by slaughtering the innocent.
As for Jesus. I am a Jew and I am a baptized Christian. The church would kick me up and down the aisle, but I will state my views.
I don't want anyone to pay for my mistakes. If I do something wrong, I pay for it myself. And if that doesn't suit The Creator, I'll have it out with Him when I meet Him. I do not answer to priests, rabbis, or any person of any faith who thinks he - or she - speaks for God.
"The Lamb of God" - according to the words of men. Get Jesus off that cross. He has suffered long enough. He has bled on too many meetings of school boards and town councils. Enough bloodshed !
Enough manipulation of people who do not think for themselves, people who fear authority, people who fear rejection by their families, their community, people who are hypnotized by pomp and ritual into accepting dogma. People who are afraid of being punished. People who do not make the difficult effort to try to understand the real God, but take the easy way out by trusting the words of men. Tradition? Based on the words of men who have gone before. Long, long before. No need to think for yourselves, to consider information that was not available to anyone in the past.
My God is too enormous and complex to fit into any book or any building, no matter how grand and magnificent. The Creator of the Universe is beyond our understanding. But we can come closer to reality, by thinking and learning. "He" may be the tiniest thing in existence and not the largest. The Big Bang came from the tiniest thing, not the largest. We cannot know.
What we can know - or learn - is to be kind and fair and just to all living things on earth. - Except cockroaches. I'll grant you that. We cannot wait for God to come down out of the clouds and put everything right. The One that put us here gave us brains so that we can do the job here and now.
Every day, people pray and confess and then they go out and do the same things over and over again, and then they pray and confess. People put it all off on their understanding of God - and Jesus - and Allah - and nothing changes. People blame their misdemeanors and their atrocities on their understanding of the words of God, written centuries ago by human beings and interpreted by human beings. If God spoke to them, has He stopped talking since then? Are you listening?
In some religions, to this day, the helpless baby lambs bleed in God's name - for "our sins" and, by slaughtering the poor lambs, men commit a most horrendous sin against innocent life.
Will we ever become civilized, humane and responsible? God save the lambs !
Phyllis Carter
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In the first 5 books of the Bible, Moses describes the requirement of sacrificing a lamb "without defect" to remove sin. (Lev. 22; Num. 29) "Without defect" meant not blind, no broken bones, no skin defects, not lame, no blemishes, no cuts or bruises anywhere. (Lev. 22:21-24) The sacrifice was recurring and frequent. So, a lamb without defect was highly valued and protected. A newborn lamb was examined and if without defect, aggressively guarded.
A baby lamb can injure itself in the first hours of life by energetically reacting to changes in light, temperature, and moisture. Therefore, a lamb without defect would be wrapped in binding (swaddling) cloths and placed in a V-shaped feeding trough (manger) until accustomed to the new environment, so it wouldn't jump and bump around. Every shepherd and farmer knew that is how you care for, guard, and protect a highly valued sacrificial lamb.
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