No Other Religion's Deity Would DIE FOR YOU!

Several years ago now, I was attending an evangelical youth conference, when the presenter asked us a question: If someone asks "Why should I believe Christianity versus any of the other religions out there? What makes Christianity special?" What should our answer be?

And he proposed a couple of answers, and then shot them down himself. According to him we might say "Well I had a religious experience" but lots of people claim to have those. We might say "I converted and Christianity changed my life!" but other religious converts say the same thing. Eventually the answer he presented to us as the actual answer was: There is other religion where the deity would die for you. In other religions the gods make commands of their followers, they bless or punish their followers, but they never sacrifice themselves for humanity. The notion that an all-powerful deity sacrificed himself out of love for his creation is simply too different from all other religions - and too different from the myths of other gods that people made up - to have also been made up.

I would like to take a moment to address this argument here today.

To begin, I think it would be good to talk about what it means to "sacrifice" something. It may seem obvious, but when we think of offerings probably the most common is burnt offerings, where whatever is sacrificed is burnt on an altar and reduced to ash. Now, throughout the Bible there are other forms of sacrifices such as offerings where the priests are allowed/expected to eat the offering, etc. But the one thing that all sacrifices have in common is that the person making the sacrifice doesn't get the sacrificed items back. The sacrificed thing is given up forever.

Bearing that in mind: Did Jesus even sacrifice himself?

According to the gospels, Jesus was arrested before dawn on the Passover. The exact time of dawn on the Passover varies, as the date of Passover is determined using a lunar calendar rather than a solar calendar, but Passover generally occurs in the month of April, so we can determine that sunrise would occur somewhere between 6:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. According to Mark 14:65-72, Jesus was already being beaten when the rooster crowed, so let's just go ahead and assume that the beating started at 5:30. Mark 15 tells us that Jesus was crucified at 9:00 a.m. so the beating, applying of the crown of thorns, carrying of the cross to the execution site, etc could have lasted - at most - for 3 1/2 hours. Of course, Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate also took place in this 3 1/2 hour period. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Jesus probably spent a half-hour before Pilate, so it's likely that the actual beating (and other physical tormets) would've lasted probably 3 hours at most.

So we have about 3 hours of physical torment until he was crucified at 9:00 a.m. Mark 15 goes on to tell us that he died at 3:00 p.m. so that's another 6 hours of crucifixion. So 9 hours total. A rough day to be sure. 

(As a brief aside, crucifixion typically took at least a full day, and sometimes several days to kill a victim. Dying after only 6 hours is pretty mild as crucifixions go. By comparison, when a person is pregnant with their first child, active labor (the most painful part) lasts for about 8.5 hours on average, and in some people it's even longer. So the average first-time parent has suffered roughly as much as Jesus supposedly did, and most of them don't expect eternal worship in return.)

Returning to topic: According to the Gospel story, Jesus certainly had a rough day to be sure, but did he sacrifice himself?

As already established, in all sacrifices the person making the sacrifice doesn't get the sacrificed thing back (or, at a bare minimum, goes into the situation believing that they are sacrificing something that they may not get back).

I might rush out into traffic to save a small child in the road, knowing that I could die. I might survive rushing out into traffic, but there is no guarantee, and if I do die, I know that I am not coming back. That is what makes the decision to rush out into traffic meaningful, that I am willing to give up something (my life) knowing that I won't get it back.

By contrast, Jesus repeatedly prophesied that he would die, and three days later he would rise. According to the gospels, Jesus died knowing that he would be coming right back. One might argue that Jesus sacrificed his weekend, but one would be hard-pressed to sincerely argue that Jesus sacrificed his life in any meaningful sense.

(As a second aside, this is actually a false prophecy. Jesus prophesied his death and resurrection three times in Mark, each time stating that he would die, and rise from the dead three days later. However, as already established, Jesus died at 3:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon (9 hours from 3:00 p.m. to midnight). He was dead all day on Saturday (an another 24 hours, or 33 hours total) and by the time that the women arrived at the tomb "Just after sunrise" Jesus was already resurrected and gone (Again, sunrise is sometime between 6:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. so it sounds as though the women probably arrived by 7:00 a.m. at the latest, and - by that time - Jesus was already gone.) So Jesus was not dead for three days, or even for two days. He was dead for somewhere between 33 and 40 hours. Barely a day and a half. Later gospels try to get around this by changing the prophecy from "three days later" to "on the third day" to argue that "Friday is day one, Saturday is day two, Sunday is day three", but this does not work with Mark's original prophecy that he would rise "three days later".) 

Many Christians try to bolster the impressiveness of Jesus' sacrifice by claiming that he went to Hell for the duration of his death. This claim is questionable-at-best as it is based on a ragtag combination of verses from various books of the Bible. The verses are so violently wrenched from their context that even many biblical scholars do not believe that Jesus went to Hell during his death. That said, the same objection - that Jesus went into this knowing it would happen, and knowing it would end, and knowing he would then take his place at the right hand of God - takes away a lot of the impressiveness. Certainly going through a few days of torment for the love of others can still be impressive and even praiseworthy depending on the situation, but it's clearly not on the same level as sacrificing one's life.

Regardless of whether Jesus went to Hell, the gospels do agree that Jesus was tortured, and died for a period of time. So I think we can agree that Jesus would have sacrificed a couple of days, and consigned himself to some fairly intense physical torment.

So we've established that there was indeed a sacrifice here, even if it was not nearly as impressive as Christians have typically been led to believe, but we still have not gotten to the heart of the issue: Was this sacrifice unique? Is a deity sacrificing themself for humanity truly so unique that it separates Christianity from all the other religions? Does it truly break the mold?

To answer this question: allow me to direct your attention to the case of the Greek Titan, Prometheus.

According to Greek myth (originating in the 8th century BCE), Prometheus was the creator of humanity, and personally molded mankind from clay (I think it no coincidence that a deity forming mankind with his own hands bears a striking resemblance to the story of Genesis, which is largely believed to have been written some 200 years later). When Zeus had one of his customary hissy fits, he decided to take away fire from humanity. Prometheus betrayed Zeus and brought the knowledge of fire back to humanity, which enabled civilization and human progress. As punishment Prometheus was chained to a rock, and an eagle came by every day to eat his liver out of his still living body. Because of his immortality, Prometheus' liver regenerated each night, just in time to be eaten out of his body again the next day.

Take a moment and think about all of the things we could not have without fire: No metal working, no plastics, probably very limited woodworking, no electronics, limited transportation aside from walking or bareback horse/camel riding... the list goes on and on. Surely, returning fire to humanity in defiance of the command of the supreme deity constitutes an incredible act of love for humanity, and an incredible concern for humanity's welfare. While Prometheus was eventually released from his suffering as a part of the Twelve Labours of Heracles, Prometheus was never given any reason to believe that his torment would end. Prometheus went into this believing that he would be punished for all eternity with no expectation of ever being released from his suffering. By contrast, Jesus went into it knowing that he would have a few bad days and then go off to paradise.

In closing, far from being unique, the ancient Greeks had a religious story in which the creator of humanity resigned himself to a fate worse than death because of his love of humanity. What's more, the story of Prometheus predates the Jesus story by over 750 years.

In closing: it is not simply that such a story COULD be made up; it is also that such a story WAS made up several times throughout human history, and there's no reason to think that the particular instance of Jesus' sacrifice is any less mythical than the story of Prometheus' sacrifice.