> but that Jesus had to suffer, to what, to make God decide to be more lenient with how he interprets our sins?

Justice requires accountability for wrongs committed. When we break God's moral law, justice requires that we be held accountable.

Jesus suffered for us to take the punishment that our sins require. Jesus took the penalty for us. That allows God to be a merciful judge, yet still fulfill all justice.

Put another way, at least how my understanding of Catholic tradition goes, atoning for sin (which was present from the Original Sin of Adam to every little or big sin we commit from time to time) demands sacrifice, and no sacrifice is sufficient to atone for all of it except for a sacrifice of God Himself. Various religions tried grain sacrifices, animals, even the ultimate sacrifice of humans, the one creature made in God's image (which was then discouraged with the story of Abraham and Isaac), but only Jesus, who was both fully God and fully human, could be the perfect sacrifice, which as a re-exercise of everything from the Last Supper through the crucifixion and resurrection, is done as the Eucharistic Rite at Mass. Jesus is seen as the perfection of the imperfect Adam, and his mother Mary (believed to have been conceived without sin, so as to be the mother of Christ) is seen as the perfection of the imperfect Eve.

Right, and the puzzling implication is even God isn't powerful enough to simply write off sin without there being some sort of sacrifice. IMHO this combined with the fact that God regularly violates his own moral codes in the bible tells me that really according to Christian doctrine, God is neither perfect, nor the most powerful being/force in the universe -- instead whatever this abstract force that requires sacrifice to negate sins --- that force is more powerful than God.

All hogwash of course, but just shows you how poorly thought out it all is.

To punish one for the sins of another does not sound like justice to me, not does it hold the sinner accountable. A judge who kills his own son so that he could pardon the people that come before him is clearly insane. Doubly so if the judge is the same one who wrote the laws.

Jesus took the punishment out of His own volition.

A man is convicted of a crime and the penalty is $1 million. Another man steps up and says he will pay the penalty.

In a way, you are right about it not being just. The convict deserves the punishment, but gets mercy instead. This is the nature of mercy and justice. They are opposed. Jesus paying for our penalty intertwines the two.

You obviously don't believe any of this is true or right. I don't make it my aim to convince you or anyone else. I'd be kidding myself if I thought I could do that. Just presenting Christian doctrine as accurately as I can.

That example only works for fines. If the punishment is 1 year in prison, then you can't get someone else to volunteer for you, even if they wanted to. And it would be quite ridiculous if suicidal (or terminally ill) people could volunteer to die so that a murderer (that they perhaps like or admire, for whatever reason) convicted to death would be pardoned.

It's true that I don't believe it all of this, but let's assume for a moment that the following is true (quoting your previous post):

> Justice requires accountability for wrongs committed. When we break God's moral law, justice requires that we be held accountable.

To me another man suddenly showing up paying the penalty is completely contradicting and undermining this accountability.

When making the rules, a god could just say "I forbid these things, and there will be consequences for breaking the rules, but in the end I will forgive, because eternity is a long time and I'm so kind and loving". Instead, the Christian rules demand that somebody (who may or may not be the one who violated the rules) is hurt. So the Christian god orchestrated the killing of either himself or his son (or maybe a bit of both? So it's suicide and/or filicide. The holy trinity is confusing), because he kind of wants to forgive people, but the rules (that he himself made, and presumably could change, being all-powerful) demand that someone is hurt. Oh, and most interpretations hold this god to be omniscient, so in that case it's not like he didn't see this mess coming when he made the rules in the first place.

If you are completely in control of a situation and voluntarily set it up in such a way that in the future you have to hurt yourself (or have you children hurt themselves) to get things to work out, is it really self-sacrifice? Having Jesus die for our sins makes the Christian god seems like a heroic firefighter who is also the arsonist.