A Prayer Of Salvation For Those Who Are Willing

Out of curiosity, where did Jesus's Y chromosome come from?

 

1. Obeying God is considered a good and moral thing.
2. Disobeying God is considered an evil and immoral thing.
3. Adam and Eve had no understanding of what death was, or that death was not good.
4. Adam and Eve had no ability to understand what good and evil was.
5. God told them they would die if they did an evil and immoral thing.

Thus, to paraphrase what you wrote, God said: "I will do something to you in a way you cannot comprehend or understand for reasons you cannot comprehend or understand, if you do something for which you are incapable of comprehending or understanding."

Prior to eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve would have had no understanding that obeying is a good thing and disobeying was an evil thing. As a result, God punishes them for something about which they would have had no moral understanding or knowledge. Itʻs almost like punishing a six-month old child for crying during a moment of silence to honor someone who died. The child has no way to understand the reason or significance of what is happening, what behavior is expected of them and why they should adhere to that behavior, just as Adam and Eve would have had no way of understanding.

They also would have had no way of understanding the consequences of their actions. If death didnʻt exist at the time, they would have no way of understanding what death was or what it implied. Try explaining a concept or situation that doesnʻt exist to someone else and see if they understand it. And then if they fail to understand something that doesnʻt exist, punish them!

In short, this is the nature of Godʻs "justice".

Just for fun, letʻs replace heaven with moon and being a church-goer with being an astronaut and see how your statements read:
You canʻt go to the moon by being an astronaut, but now that youʻre going to the moon, you should be an astronaut.


I hope this helps illustrate why some people donʻt find the common evangelical "witness" to be overly compelling.

 

You suggest Jesusʻs Y-chromosome came from God the Father. The reason I asked about it is because our understanding of genetics, which the Israelites 2,000 years ago did not have, begs new questions about what it means for Jesus to be divine. I realize itʻs been a couple years now, so I anticipate you have moved on. But perhaps someone else will help me understand.

I can take your comment in one of two ways: 1) God is a physical being who has chromosomes that “he” can pass down to “his” children through procreative acts; 2) God manufactured a Y-chromosome and the other 22 chromosomes from nucleotides to create a “holy sperm” – contrary to the Monty Python song, only one sperm was sacred!

The first understanding is not consistent with more traditional Christian understandings of God being without a corporeal body. Of course, Genesis often portrays God in an anthropomorphic manner, similar to how other Mediterranean, Mesopotamian and Near Eastern gods were portrayed. It also draws upon how those cultures understood procreation – like a farmer who wants to grow crops by planting a seed in the ground, a man plants his seed in a woman, who nourishes it and causes it to grow. The seed contained the essence of the being and was solely from the father, the womanʻs role was simply to nourish the seed with her blood. The Book of Wisdom, chapter 7, makes it clear this is how the Hebrews understood procreation. Thus, masculine gods, Zeus for example, could plant their seed in a woman and have offspring that were “sons of god” – they were divine. However, Christianity says it only happened one time, when Godʻs “seed” was presumably planted in Mary by the Holy Spirit, leading to Jesus, “Godʻs only son”. Mary needed to be a “pure” vessel for this divine seed, so she needed to be a virgin (God wouldnʻt want any seeds from men in her as that would “mix seeds”, something Leviticus says violates Hebrew purity standards).

Unlike the first understanding, the second understanding begs the question about the nature of Jesusʻs divinity. If God is not a corporeal being, then there is no “God-gene” residing on a chromosome, so Jesus would not have inherited his divinity that way. But if there is nothing divine about Jesusʻs DNA, then what exactly was it that made Jesus “Godʻs son”? – it would not be his biology. Was it that God imparted his Holy Spirit (which would not be coded for by a gene) onto Jesus, thereby making Jesus divine? If so, this begs the entire question of why the virgin birth with no earthly human father was needed at all? I mean, if what made Jesus divine was Godʻs spirit being in him, then it wouldnʻt matter where mysterious 23 chromosomes came from, including the Y-chromosome that Mary presumably lacked.

You see, I understand the nature of Jesusʻs divinity, the virgin birth, etc., when placed in the cultural and temporal context of Israel 2,000 years ago – it makes total sense how the entire story played itself out. But with our scientific understanding of how procreation works, the nature of the virgin birth no longer makes sense at all, and only raises a lot of other questions.

 

That's why the trinity is properly translated as god the ************************, the bastard, and their imaginary friend.


edit: ** mutherfuka

 

From the data bank of Y chromosomes.

 

Because this corrupt generation (actually boomers) will be the cause of the end of the world as we know it. Thank God!

 

Seems awfully inconsistent with the intersection omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence...much less the concept of grace. More than that even, the god who did that wouldn't be worthy of worship. He'd just be an asshole.