The good and the bad of Christianity is rooted in understanding why Jesus was crucified. Why was Jesus forsaken by God? How could the divine be killed?#

I find in the Bible that our desire for the answer to why has been with us from the very beginning. The stories in Genesis tell us that the serpent told Eve the fruit will allow her to know "good and evil," and Eve takes and eats seeing that it was "desirable for gaining wisdom." #

The problem is that our desire for an answer to why leads us to put words in God's mouth. Not being God, we are left to our own vices, filling in the blanks with our own terms, which we can only do in the context of what we know. #

Is it any wonder then that our explanations for why Jesus was crucified, in what theologians call atonement theories, use metaphors like financial legal, military, and sacrificial? All of these are human concepts that we put on God, and in so doing we create a God in our image. #

Does a follower of Jesus need to understand why he was crucified, or are we called to simply respond? #

What would happen if rather than focusing on what's in it for me that Jesus died we focused on his last instructions for us to "love one another"? #

Lost in the focus on creation and Original Sin in the creation stories of Genesis is the idea that we were intended to co-exist with God, to live and walk with God, here on earth. To be "at one" with God. Our story is one of a God wanting to be "at one" with us, and the obstacles we keep putting up that prevent us from being "at one" with the Sacred. #

Jesus provides the way to "at-one-ment" with God, the way that brings to fruition the kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven. The day on which we finally "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God," on that day we will finally understand why it is Good Friday.#