Vulnerability

God is vulnerable to us. The other day I told my step daughter my theories of why the old fashioned atonement theory no longer worked for me. To sum up my old atonement theory it goes like this: Humans sinned. This was an affront to God's justice and since he is an eternal being He needed a gigantic eternal balancing of the scales. Therefore he punished his Son in our place so he wouldn't have to punish us. Since  God is also the Son and he is an eternal being this sacrifice was big enough to cover us all. One dead deity Son was a big enough sacrifice to cover trillions of people. 

I don't want to even waste time talking about how ridiculous that atonement theory is. It makes God to be subject to something called justice and that He is powerless to overrule it and must sacrifice His son to make things square. He can't just forgive, He must make the eternal restitution in the sacrifice of His son. Secondly, who would torture His own son to save others?? Not me. It is plain hogwash and is blasphemous in that it makes someone who Jesus described as a kind Father out to be a blood thirsty Ogre.

So why did Jesus come? There are a lot of reasons which I will discuss in this blog as time permits in different articles but today I will start with vulnerability.

God Himself in the form of His Son ( that's straight line orthodox theology; God and the Son are one person in two forms , plus the Spirit) literally put Himself in our hands. Clothed only in weak flesh starting as a baby He turned Himself over to human hands to do with Him as we liked. First it was into the hands of His thankfully loving parents who could choose to feed Him or not. Finally he ended up in the hands of His enemies who chose to torture and kill Him. God was giving us proof that He is willing to give His heart, His very self to us. That is huge and I want to repeat it so you get it. God gives His heart to us. It's unbelievable. We can hurt Him. That is why He describes this relationship is terms of a passionate lovers relationship in so many places in scripture. He puts His hearts and guts into the relationship and He is harmless. We can hurt Him.

This is almost foolishness and frankly almost unbelievable. Why would the One who created the universe become vulnerable to you and me? He loves us. There is no explaining it. It has taken me close to 50 years to figure this out. I started out with the plain wonder of God as a child, then fear of God as a young adult , anger with God as a middle adult ( when I felt He had let me down) to finally and recently this last 10 years to finding myself in  the most amazing relationship I could ever conceive. What's amazing? Not that I am pious or obedient or reverent or have no bad habits. What's amazing is that I have this unbelievable lover and friend who is deeply committed to and involved with me at the deepest personal level possible. The only way I can put it is that I am deeply loved and I knowI matter to Him. This love relationship is like sweet honey in my deepest soul. It is the greatest pleasure in my life. I am constantly constantly amazed at the level of personal care and love I experience as His child and creature.

I haven't created all this or done anything especially religious to make this happen. I have a foul mouth and bad habits and can be lazy ( I could go through all my habits but they are run of the mill). The only thing I have done is be cheeky enough to believe I am infinitely loved like this. It ( this love) matters to me not because I am more religious than others but because it is so rewarding. He loves me and it feels good. How's that? 

So One of the reasons Jesus came , in my opinion, was to show without question, that He is giving Himself without reserve to us. He isn't protecting Himself and holding Himself aloof only for the super  heroic non sinners , but He is giving Himself to run of the mill "us" . He is giving Himself to nice people, cruel people, organized people, sloppy people; He is giving Himself to us.