In a nutshell. There's more to it than that, but essentially Jesus was a way of letting us know that God considered us more important to Him than His "standards." Whatever those are.
So yeah, God already let us put Him on trial, and accepted the death sentence. I wrote a little bit about this in this thread:
quote: I have a developing idea (not yet fully formed, and only at the playful stage), that reality is not only God's fiction but God's hypersigil, and that by entering His own creation through Jesus He was able to rewrite facets of His own nature, while retaining His nature, forever unchanging. This is not an impossibility: an infinite and timeless being could conceivably create a Universe for the purposes of understanding Himself better. As He realises that there are aspects of Himself that need to change, He interacts with linear time via Jesus, writing His desired characteristics into the suit. The personality trait bleed-thorugh effect takes place, but is shifted into non-linear time, thus making the changes wrought an eternal aspect of God (ie: in order for a changeless non-linear being to change, He must interact with linear time). In effect, God and Jesus swapped places.
This isn't as potentially blasphemous as it sounds. Firstly, Jews believe (from what little I know) in a God that wasn't perfect – secondly, there is plenty of scriptural precedent for God changing His mind (or giving an indication that He may change His mind if certain conditions are met). It explains apparent differences in tone and the nature of God between Old and New Testaments, while still holding that they are the same infinite, unchanging being.
The use of Jesus as a fictionsuit effectively solves another problem: the idea of humaity as God's plaything. Of course, this is already partially solved by a conception of God as author of reality (interestingly, God is described as both author and perfecter in the Bible) – the writers I know (myself included) go to great pains to feel what their characters feel, suffering as they suffer, laughing as they laugh. Of course, this only gives God an understanding of what humanity is, not what it is to be human. One of the things that has always struck me about Jesus is His bravery: the desire of God to stub His own toe, to feel hungry and tired and have a crush on the girl who lives down the road and support the family business, and shit and piss with the rest of us (imagine being the girl that Jesus had His eye on!). And of course, this model only really makes sense if Jesus is to be discarded by God, and treated with the same impartiality as He treats us all (in a way, then, Jesus could have been God's salvation, nailed to the cross with God's imperfections as well as ours).
I've still got some way to go in order to fully gather my thoughts on the subject, but it's a start. |
