Jesus' Death Not a Sacrifice!

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The whole idea of "sacrifice" arises from almost every ancient religion.

The ancients saw their gods in very anthropomorphic forms. This long word simply means that they had a wide spectrum of human qualities. God as pure Love would have soared right over their heads like a distant jet!

In fact, ancient faiths such as Judaism and Islam did not really have much to say about the relationship of human Love with the divine.

To please the primitive gods, you had to give them gifts. And some of them, including Jehovah, were carnivores, like the primitive tribes that served him. They actually wanted and needed meat!

This need for "sacrifice" proves just how primitive, backwards, and spiritually arrested were the savages of earlier times.

Jesus knew, and taught, that God was Love. His was a much more advanced and sophisticated view of God. His God was not in the sky, but in the heart. His God commanded Love, but needed nothing from human beings.

It was not long after his death, however, that his followers abandoned his essentially mystical faith, and backslid, or reverted, to the ancient and arrested god of the early Jewish tradition. They assumed that this god still needed sacrifices; sacrifices erased sin; and so, they interpreted the death of Jesus in an arrested "Old Testament" pattern--- as "sacrifice."

Jesus knew that this world, and this life, were not Reality; he taught that the world and physical body were, to quote Docetist Christians, "phantoms." He did not really "live" on earth as his home; in fact, he was a bit uncomfortable with this world. He said of his followers, "They will be no part of this world, as I am no part of this world." For him, dying was like a change of clothing, as it reminds us in "The Celestial Song," a great mystical classic.

So, he wanted to use even death to symbolize just how important is Love.
By his voluntary and terrible death, he volunteered to carry upon his back the karma of many, even of the whole world! So, he prayed that his death would create karmic payment for "sins" (errors) that he had not committed, but that others had.

His death, then, was a supreme act of Love. It is the greatest act of Love imaginable. For he said, "No one has greater Love than he who gives his life for his friends." We can fulfill this every day by using most of the time in our lives to serve others, thus "giving our lives" to our "friends."

But don't let the reversed, regressive, and primitive thinking of so many "Christian" churches deceive you: Jesus' death had absolutely nothing to do with the primitive, disgusting idea of "sacrifice"!
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