More recently, the concept of sin has been amplified to a much greater extent and the idea that we are born in Sin due to the fall, and that Christ came to save us from sin, through his life, death and resurrection. This comes in the various theories that Christ, at God's will sacrificed his life in atonement for our Sins.
There was an article recently in the Church Times, which discussed the various theories of atonement.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/ ... pegoat-god
I had once held a view that a merciful God wouldn't allow suffering and eternal separation from him, and if he did, he wasn't a God that I could recognise. In those days, I was agnostic about God. I felt that if he was there, he hadn't done much to help his people, given the wars, suffering that went on. My own father died after great suffering, as did a friend, who took his own life because of it. So, any belief that I had was shattered and trust in God's mercy foundered on the rock of being unable to accept that suffering was actually a source of God's grace.
Obviously I have change those views completely, but I still struggle with the idea of God's wrath at our sin that he would kill his own Son ins such a painful and public spectacle. I accept that Jesus died for our sins, but, the deliberate sacrifice just seems to narrow a way of looking at it all.
Do others here struggle with the atonement theories, or, is it as all as cut and dried as I had thought in my youth?
