"Lamb of god." Ok. I've finally seen how these religions got started: Pagan Sacrifice

[lindysalsagal]

It sometimes takes a change in perspective to see the forest through the trees. I've had an epiphany:

I never understood why Jesus had to be sacrificed and why they say "Take away the sins of the world." It never made any sense to me. We, who live in the 20th and 21st centuries no longer practice sacrifice. Ok we pay our religious institutions, but we don't believe we're buying favor from god directly when we do it. We don't go to church and throw a hundred dollar bill in the basket to help insure a great business deal goes through. Or that a woman will fall in love with us, or that we'll have better growing weather. We really don't.

But early christians did. It is a pagan requirement to make sacrifices to the pagan gods to garner their favor for our personal needs. Ok, I have to admit, people pray before ball games, and when they win, some athletes say, "Thank you, god!" and try to give god credit. Same thing happens at award ceremonies.

But that's really not associated with sacrifice.

The reason judaism and paganism gave way to christianity was the great one-size-fits-all god sacrifice. This was the first god who made is so simple:

1. Only one god, and he's largely benevolent if you follow his simple rules, and all rules applied to everyone, so, preaching to the crowd worked, since everyone followed the same rules. Pagans had no such preaching because there were no rules, only selfish and malevolent, unpredictable, screwy gods.

2. 10 rules. That's it. Fit on a home-made chunk of clay, or easily written out on a scrap of parchment, or in church windows.

3.This is the first god to do his own sacrifice for YOU! Incredible! He sacrificed his own beloved son so we wouldn't have to keep burning up perfectly good livestock. WHAT A DEAL!!!

Maybe everyone else already got here, but I've been reading some novels and watching some viking shows, and have become accustomed to their way of thinking (don't worry, I don't buy any of it, it's just fun to hear them trash christianity). And it suddenly dawned on me that early christians demanded this idea of sacrifice: Sacrifice is entirely pagan, so, early christians needed one, too. But they needed a really, really big one. A final one, that would end all the routine little ones: They needed god's own beloved son to die, to make it sell.

Throw in forgiveness of sins, and eternal life after death, and how could it lose? Honestly! It's the most brilliant bit of marketing in the history of humanity!

When you look at it with 2nd century eyes, christianity FINALLY makes sense! Jesus is the mega-pagan sacrifice! It's all pagan, and the believers have no clue, because paganism is largely forgotten these days.

It also makes sense when you hear about sacrifices in the early bible. Didn't god tell abraham to kill his son, and he almost did? I'm not schooled at all in the bible, but I think there were lots of sacrifices going on. It was what you did in those days.

So, christianity is pagan-lite. How nice!