Last Monday I had the privilege of being a part of a combined passover and Easter celebration. Since the last supper that Jesus shared with his disciples before he died was a passover meal, combining the two makes sense for Christians.
I'm sure it wasn't the most authentic passover meal. We didn't follow all the instructions in Exodus 12, and that's not even the only source of passover instructions in the Bible. There are also traditions not found in the Bible that Jews follow at the passover.
We cooked lamb over an open fire, outdoors, and we had unleavened bread to go with it. One of the people there had made the unleavened bread, and the lamb was from a halal butcher. (Halal standards are similar to kosher standards.) Some of the conversation was about the passover and Easter, and some was casual conversation about other things. As part of the meal, we took communion together, as Jesus instructed us to do in remembrance of him. It was special to be able to recognize the death and resurrection of Jesus in a way that I'm not used to--a somewhat less ceremonial way that took more time, was more fun, and may have been more like the original Last Supper (in spirit anyway) than our typical communion celebrations.
But there was something disturbing about this too. As we read Exodus 12, verse 12 stuck out to me, in which God says, "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD." The Israelites' liberation so many years ago required other people to die, or to suffer because someone close to them died. Some of the ones who died would have had very little to do with the Israelites' suffering and oppression, and some were kids. And in the Christian remembrance of Jesus's death, we symbolically commit cannibalism, symbolically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the one who told us to do that. Or if you follow the Catholic belief in transubstantiation, you're actually metaphysically committing cannibalism, but only because the one who gave his life for you told you to do that.
I believe it's important for religious people to wrestle with the disturbing aspects of our faith, not to just pretend they're not there, or use some semi-satisfying explanation to pretend they're not disturbing.
In both the passover and Easter stories, liberation required someone to die. Is it better that the people who died deserved it (as in some of the Egyptians at the passover), or that the one who died was willing but didn't deserve it?
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I seem to recall reading that St. Augustine asserted that Christianity did provide answers for suffering, kind of stepwise along the below lines:
1) If a man suffers (either through the exercise of his free will or not), it is both deserved and willed by God, because,
2) God, being all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-knowing, had the choice of creating beings that could feel and create suffering, or beings that could not. He also had the choice of creating a world of solely positive qualities (e.g. fairness, justice, love) but chose to create one where these qualities could be negated or give rise to their opposites (e.g. injustice, hate). God also has the choice to eliminate all suffering any time he likes, since he is all-powerful and has no human limitations, but chooses not to. Therefore, it logically proceeds that
3) All suffering is and must be divinely sanctioned, and
4) It may even be used for good, as in the case of martyrs, repenting sinners, etc.
The lesson I take from that is, if a man's chosen religion is at all involved with an omnipotent deity, then he gets about as much suffering as he gets and he's not allowed to complain because it's in the divine plan.
To readers who didn't find this through Facebook: Premee is responding to a brief comment thread on Facebook. In response to another reader (who happens to be very sexy), I said that I'd heard some people say that Christianity doesn't give a good explanation of suffering, but we have a God who understands suffering because he's experienced it.
And now my response to Premee's comment:
As the book of Job teaches us, we're not allowed to complain about the suffering that God allows, but it's even worse to judge someone for complaining that God allows suffering.
Well, that might not be the exact meaning of the book of Job. But if you read Job 42:1-7, you can probably see where I'm coming from. For bonus points, read Job chapters 38 to 41 too.
Are atheists allowed to redeem their bonus points for anything? Prizes, perhaps?
These aren't points with God; they're Alex points. I explained Alex points in my comment on this post. If you read Job chapters 38 to 41, you will be only the second person to earn Alex points.
I seem to have gotten three main things out of reading the suggested scripture:
1. The God of the Old Testament was some kind of badass mofo;
2. I clearly need to start answering questions with "Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee?" rather than "Get out of my office," and;
3. Alex points
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