For example, regarding Jesus having “atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father,” O’Malley says, “…I believe on the solidest scholarship that the story of Adam and Eve is a symbolic fiction, that it tells in a parabolic (“curve-ball”) way the undeniable truth that human beings, even in the most ideal situation, will find a way to screw it up…It is unconscionable that God – who apparently knew what he [she] was doing – could create us free and imperfect, then punish us for using freedom imperfectly…”
O’Malley emphasizes that he doesn’t reject the atonement theory (Jesus’ expiatory sacrifice to atone for the moral faults of the human race). He just has “enormous difficulty with it.” He refuses to believe, like most of us, that God is “vindictive.”
O’Malley offers a lot more on the topic of our forgiving God [Prodigal Father] such as Jesus revealing to us that God wants us to forgive one another 70 times 7 times. He asks, “Can’t we expect as much of God?”
I suggest his book(s) and offer one of his perspective because Christmas nears. It’s time for us to focus on the incarnation – the Word made flesh – and not on Jesus’ death and reasons for it, such as atonement. We focus on birth, not punishment and death. That’s for later, along with resurrection.
God became human, and what’s more, God became the weakest being, our most defenseless form – an infant. So, as the snow falls and our landscape turns white (we hope?), let’s remember it’s time to tend to the weakest among us, and that includes the old and infirmed many of whom having spent many a Christmas season getting ready for the infant.
Having just lit the 4th Advent candle representing peace, we all pray for peace in the coming year – peace throughout the world and in our lives – and especially for the peace that comes with our gifts of comfort and care we give to the youngest and oldest among us.
Deacon David Pierce
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