What I Believe and Know about the Atonement
This is a list of my deep intuitions about the atonement.
This was hard to write.
You will see some connections to the atonement theories from last week. These are the simple truths the theories are meant to explain or in a few cases to which the theories have led me. If the theory later turns out to be false where it has led me was not.
This list turns out to be not quite but mostly the basic message of the gospels. Even so, that isn’t what it is. It isn’t a testimony. This is self-examination. I am trying to see what I deeply know and feel about it.
I don’t know if this effort would be useful for most people. Most people don’t have ideas tumbling out one over the other and thoughts and words words words all over the place. I’m trying to burrow down underneath all that to the source. I am not trying to harmonize or analyze or make sense.
Here we go.
- Our choices are meaningful and consequential. (This isn’t a chain of reasoning. It’s observing the act of making a choice. The meaningfulness and consequentialness is one of the attributes or qualities of choicemaking.)
- Sin is grotesque and horrible. God is revolted. The Puritan divines were absolutely right. Some of the imagery in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is inspired. This is something like a primary intuition for me, but it has three sources or components.
- Justice as sehnsucht. The longing for justice **even on oneself** is sweet and pure and piercing just like the longing for Fairy land or enchantment is. This is another primary experience for me that I have discovered is not widely shared, but it is so. **Though he slay me, yet will I praise God.**
- We are glorious, amazing beings. The potential of Man is heady stuff. So when that potential gets squandered for trivia by deliberate choice . . .
- The last component is the chain of reasoning that started when I realized being meaningful was an inherent qualia of choice. That led me to the realization that God being revulsed by my sinful choices wasn’t just an arbitrary thing, it was inherent in me being an agent. In fact, in a way desirable—because if I could not anger Him, I could not delight him.
- Jesus loves me personally—and, yes, the Father cares for me—in the sweetest most overwhelming way
- Jesus has been inside every pain and every sorrow and misery I have. “The Son of Man hath descended below them all.”
- It was a great victory what he did. Triumph. Heroic. Glory. I feel this deeply.
- Christ liberates me. I can and do extrapolate that it is because of the atonement, but the actual bottom line is just that I have experienced him liberating me. Like a fresh wind blowing inside soul –but not a abstract metaphor, something actually inside, an actual feeling of air and lightness.
- What Christ is and has done is greater than we can imagine. Nothing is lost. All is gained.
MVT
April 10, 2023
“I have experienced him liberating me. Like a fresh wind blowing inside soul –but not a abstract metaphor, something actually inside, an actual feeling of air and lightness.”
This is what I’m hoping to experience some day. I was an atheist for years, then a theist, and then a Christian. Ever since I decided to become a Christian (because heaven seemed to describe what I longed for and Mormon heaven even more so), I’ve struggled to feel any intuitive feelings toward Christ. I feel intuitive feelings toward God the Father and I’ve had experiences that confirm to me the existence of the Holy Ghost, but Christ is such an abstract idea to me. That’s why Dr. Charlton’s post on Christianity as a natural religion resonates with me also much.
“As for the mechanism by which this might be achieved – which is by following Jesus Christ, as a sheep follows the Good Shepherd – this is not something that is likely to be a natural or spontaneous conclusion.”
This is how I feel about Christ. I don’t understand why it’s not more natural or obvious. Thank you for all your posts on Christ. I enjoy reading them.
MVT
April 10, 2023
I’m sorry, I feel obligated to include something else in my post, but it’s not exactly relevant. I said I was motivated to become a Christian because of heaven but it started with my encounter with the philosophy of Antinatalism as an atheist that started me on the path back to God. I had already had two small children at the time and then realized I had brought them into this world with nothing to offer them (i.e. God). A loving God and heaven make bringing children into this world worth it. Just felt compelled to share that.
G.
April 10, 2023
MVT,
no need to apologize. Comments like this keep the blog going.
FWIW, that Christ feeling I describe usually comes from getting to near despair with a sin, or other trials.
Wesley Dean
April 10, 2023
MVT, have you read “The Grandeur of God” by Jeffrey R. Holland? Your comments brought it to my mind.
JRL in AZ
April 10, 2023
I have had many theories about the Atonement of Jesus Christ in my life, and I have greatly enjoyed reading your theories and thoughts about it. Some of my theories have been proven false as I have learned more about Christ and His love. I currently have several incomplete theories that do not explain everything. But I need to echo what you write above about experiencing liberation because of Christ. I have also felt that liberation. I can also call it a cleansing, a relief, a rescue, new life, fresh eyes, a new heart. So many ways to describe it, and all of them slightly different and fully true. I hope to some day understand more about the necessity for the Atonement and how it works, but for now I enjoy pondering about it because I know that it is real and it effects real change. It is beautiful and wonderful in my eyes.
G.
April 11, 2023
Amen.
MVT
April 11, 2023
@Wesley Dean thank you for the recommendation! I’ll definitely read it. I’ve always enjoyed Elder Holland.
Zen
April 12, 2023
Let me see if I can add to this.
Christ is the solution and has solutions for all problems. He is the Way.
But the Gospel of John makes some interesting comments about Christ being in us. I don’t think I really understand that, but in some way, he really does feel what we feel. And when we repent, it is Christ helping us. That is also why the warning to the unrepentant, that the Spirit will not always strive with man, is so poignant.
I have thought it was interesting that some great spiritual experiences, like the First Vision and the visit of the Angel Moroni, happened in moments of repentance.
I have wondered how it was that Christ could have experienced every temptation and weakness and sickness. There are a lot of those, if you really start counting. But if he is in us, like the Holy Ghost, pushing along side us, that becomes far more understandable.