Good Doubt / Better Theology (wk 2: Jesus died for your sins)
Hayley and Vince talk more about the two "untangling" strategies people in BLC tend to find helpful for cultivating life-giving faith in the face of modern confusion, injustice, and burnout. This week's Bible study to see our strategies in action: New Testament passages about Jesus dying for our sins.
SPEAKER NOTES
Good Doubt-Better Theology (wk 2: Jesus died for your sins)
Context
We started last week with a Big Question -- let's do that again this week… ==visual==
- How does one cultivate life-giving faith in the face of confusion, injustice, and the demands of modern life?
As relevant as ever a question in February 2025!
- Especially when faith (or professed people of faith) are responsible for much of the confusion, injustice, and burnout we experience…
- It’s not easy…
But, despite the obvious challenges, people in our church demonstrate profound insight on how to answer this question!
We suggested last week that we, as pastors, hear two distinct (and awesome) strategies represented all the time when people share “what’s working for them” (or “what keeps them coming to this church” so they can at least try to cultivate a life-giving faith)… ==visual==
- Good doubt — is an embrace of mystery, resting in “I don’t know” or “can we know?” Good doubt sees question asking as comforting, it doesn’t bring about further anxiety. It’s when mystery or even setting things aside feels like a satisfying answer.
- Better theology — is a search for a satisfying answer beyond “I don’t know”. It’s questioning limiting theologies and looking for other options, other ways of thinking that paint a picture of a God that is helpful and redemptive
Both of these feel really natural to BLC. We hear people say things like…
- “I’m here because I need a community where I can ask questions and not get in trouble.”
- that’s good doubt
- “I’m here because we talk about a God who is empathetic and close, not a God who is cold and distant.”
- that’s better theology
So this month, for each of our Sunday messages, we are doing two things:
- For the first half, we’re talking a bit about these two strategies
- their virtues, their overlap, their differences, how we — or different people in our church — might relate to them
- For the second half, we’re doing a Bible study with something from the Bible that particularly pokes at confusion, injustice, or burnout
- to show both of these strategies in action — as super helpful for cultivating life-giving faith in the face of difficult questions
- These work as strategies beyond just engaging a Sacred Text like the Bible, so that’s not the only thing we have in mind here,
- BUT we thought doing some application to difficult Biblical scriptures would be a good way to help everyone see the usefulness of these strategies and grow in confidence employing them on their own.
Yes. So let’s talk a little more about the strategies in a zoomed out way first:
Working the two strategies some more
Yeah, we’ve highlighted a lot of what’s attractive about good doubt and better theology,
- but reasonable objections might be raised about them
- in our own minds
- or by other people around us.
- Part of growing in confidence with these strategies is knowing how to respond to those objections. So…
One hard question that can be asked of the “good doubt” strategy is:
- What differentiates the process of “trusting our best pictures of God and love” (a key part of good doubt, as you have described) from a hyper-individualism that we don’t want to encourage here?
- Like how is this not “make up your own truth” and just appeal to good doubt whenever you personally feel uncomfortable?
- Yeah this makes me think of the pushback against the idea of being “spiritual but not religious”
- Maybe you’ve used that language to describe yourself so I don’t want to overly critique it!
- But I do believe that hyper-individualism gets in the way of the beauty of attaching yourself to a community, a tradition
- Good doubt can point us toward this reservoir of tradition to pull from, one that comforts us in our doubt. Doubt is built in!
- You’re not out here on your own trying to craft something you can stand on.
And there are helpful boundaries!
- Not really a free-for-all because the central idea of “God is love” holds our wondering and questioning together. That’s what we have to return to
- Idea from Nadia Bolz Weber we looked at last week of the life of Jesus as the central point of gravity
- Jesus used question asking and storytelling as modes of countering the demands of certainty from the religious elite. He expanded beliefs, expanded community, painting a bigger picture of love
- Doubt is healthiest when we are pushing back against “certainty at all costs”
- I’d argue that the claim of “you’re just making up your own truth” is typically used against someone who is expressing a picture of an expansively loving God
- If you yourself have had anxiety around am I just making stuff up when I feel uncomfortable? Am i just picking and choosing what to believe in?
- My guess is that you are doubting and questioning what does not appear loving
- If you are choosing justice and love in the midst of uncertainty, you’re doing it right and you not out here on your own
Yeah, the check people like us need to hear in order to avoid hyper-individualism is NOT “stop trusting your instincts that God actually is love”; it’s “choose community even if it’s imperfect and hard” to pursue that conviction.
One hard question that can be asked of the “better theology” strategy is:
- What really makes better theology better?
- Many in our community have experienced the limits of more conservative theologies, so is "better" just a more liberal theology? But, if so, couldn’t that just be trading one exclusive group for another exclusive group?
- Although the “liberal” vs “conservative” culture wars binary is our world’s default way to try to explain everything today, I don’t think it captures well all of the “better theology” moves that our church helps people make.
- In general, “liberal” impulses will probably get us closer to the “better theology” we’re after in our church
- If the only other option is the extreme right-wing stances that have become synonymous with conservatism in Trump-era America,
- BUT often times, classically “liberal” ideas don’t go far enough to be “better theology” —
- Like inclusion for example. Liberal settings are great at talking about inclusion and making sure there’s representation at the table.
- But better theology doesn’t just ask, “who’s at the table?”
- It asks, “what’s being talked about at the table?”
- This is not only about inclusion, but about “inclusion into what?”
- Because if the dominant system more people are being included into is still unjust, then inclusion isn’t enough!
- Or, other times, classically “liberal” ideas are just as fundamentalist as their conservative counterparts
- It’s just that instead of being fundamentalist about ethnocentric or religious beliefs, liberals can be fundamentalist about the world being like a soul-less machine, optimizable through reason and the logic of the Market, which seems to be presented as savior much more than a Living God.
- In these cases “Better theology” is somewhere in between the conservative and liberal fundamentalist extremes ==visual off==
- In general, “liberal” impulses will probably get us closer to the “better theology” we’re after in our church
Yeah I recently heard the idea that if it appears that there are only two options and one of them is bad, then you’re missing something. Something beyond the binary
Bible Study
Alright, let’s turn to this week’s Bible Study. What are we going to look at this week with our good doubt and better theology strategies?
We’re going to look at “Jesus dying for our sins” — an unavoidable phrase if you’ve ever been anywhere near a church.
Certainly a phrase that bumps up against a lot of our 21st century late modern sensibilities, leaving us morally confused and perhaps psychologically triggered if we have some church harm or trauma in our background.
There are many New Testament passages we might zoom in on here, but to give us some focus we’re picking a few representatives: ==visual==
Romans 3:25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood.
1 John 2:1-2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
1 Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
In theology studies, popular American Christian belief about Jesus dying for our sins has a name: it’s called “Substitutionary Atonement” ==visual off==
- it says:
- God demands a worthy blood-sacrifice for all the sin in the world, to be appeased from his wrath,
- and when humanity can’t provide a worthy sacrifice, Jesus, who is both God and human, substitutes himself for us so there can be a worthy sacrifice once and for all,
- and now God doesn’t demand blood anymore.
- Probably something like that is what you've picked up about “Jesus dying for your sins” if you grew up in America (maybe no matter where you grew up in the age of the Internet)
- Before being very critical, we should be fair and point out that there has been some redeeming value to this interpretation of “Jesus dying for our sins” —
- particularly among people who have struggled with addiction or experienced major-turnarounds from chaotic lifestyles…
- BUT in general, there are LOTS of reasons to find this problematic.
- To name a handful of problematic things that you might relate to…
- It is built on violence as a solution, which is completely counter to Jesus’ nonviolent ministry. This creates massive inconsistencies in the Gospels
- But more than being inconsistent, there’s MAJOR moral issue to the idea “violence as a solution”! This idea of redemptive violence” (which we’ll talk more about)
- and worst of all, it’s God who is the one presenting violence as a solution — big yikes!
- This makes Jesus’ death (the crucifixion) sort of inconsistent with Jesus’ birth (known as the Incarnation, God becoming human) —
- According to Substitutionary Atonement, we don’t really have “God in Jesus”; we have a split personality God:
- Angry Father God who demands blood on one side,
- and then the Merciful, Loving Son Jesus who’s sacrificed by God on the other side
- The whole narrative of substitutionary atonement has been (fairly) referred to as “divine child abuse”
Importantly, this is NOT the only way to interpret “Jesus dying for our sins” in history.
- In fact, it has only been popular for the last 200 years.
- For the first 1800 years of Christianity, most Christians did NOT understand “Jesus dying for their sins” this way!
And so, as we’ve said, we are in good company historically when we employ our two BLC strategies!
Hayley, do you want to take a good doubt approach to this? Or a better theology approach?
Good Doubt
- I’ll take Good Doubt: we thought about switching it up this week since I talked about good doubt last week…but I wanna talk about womanism, which is going to be our lens for engaging with good doubt today
- You may have heard us talk about womanist theology before, or more broadly liberation theology, black liberation theology
- Womanism was born out of the intersection between black liberation theology and feminist liberation theology, out of the need for Black women’s voices to be amplified.
- So why is womanism helpful for our conversation on good doubt?
- I’ve realized that good doubt often shifts the emphasis, it redefines what is MOST important when we are asking questions
- What we are asking is not some theoretical but has lived out consequences
- Womanism helps answer an important question here -
- When we think of this idea of “Jesus died for our sins”…does the crucifixion, the death of Christ, have to be at the center of our understanding?
- Is emphasizing salvation thru crucifixion essential? Do we have to accept that idea of redemptive violence?
- Instead of accepting death and violence at the center— what if life is at the center instead?
Our guide in good doubt today is going to be Reverend Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, a womanist theologian, pastor, writer who has worked at Union Theological Seminary and Episcopal Divinity School
Recently listened to a lecture from Douglas, given about a year ago, where she is wrestling with this question of how do we handle the crucifixion. I found her wrestling really helpful!
- She argues that we have to change the way we look at the cross, especially because of the crucifying realities for the marginalized and oppressed that exist in the here and now
- This redemptive suffering myth is troubling, especially for the marginalized and oppressed
- Douglas clarifies that salvation through suffering is not a helpful message, especially for those who are suffering most
- The cross is unavoidable, just as crucifying realities continue to persist in our world
- Womanism shows us that we have to be careful about how we communicate when we talk about the cross so that we don’t paint sacrificial death as the universal paradigm for salvation
- Dying to self looks a lot different when you’re already facing crucifying realities in your daily life instead of coming from a place of privilege
- She says: “Any divine meaning to be found in the act of crucifixion itself relates to God’s compassionate, uncompromised solidarity with the subjugated and oppressed”
- We don’t have to over-emphasize death and suffering in our meaning-making. And we can doubt that violence and the crucifixion, is at the center of our understanding of salvation.
- Douglas says that something is missing when we move from birth to cross to resurrection
- What’s missing is the ministry, the life of Jesus
- The Gospels’ focus on ministry — this is what drove God’s justice forward
- The cross actually points us to the way Jesus lived, not just how he died
- We get to participate in God’s loving work in the world shown through the life of Jesus.
- Douglas describes this as being driven by a restlessness for God’s justice
- Emphasizing the ministry and action of God helps us understand salvation in a new light
- “Salvation shifts from pietistic, individual salvation secured by a sacrificed Savior to being about human and social transformation found in the ministry of Jesus”
- We come back to the connection between doubt and love —
- Salvation is a call to be present now — Jesus has empathetic solidarity in his birth, life, death, and resurrection (the full scope of the story), so we are called to have empathetic, loving solidarity as well
- Womanism gives us the model of emphasizing Jesus’ life so that we are empowered to participate in bringing about salvation and justice now
Beautiful! And that’s not doubting the Bible that’s just doubting the read of the Bible we’ve inherited culturally - that has Jesus’ death disproportionately weighted over the majority of the text about his life!
Better Theology...
For an example of a better theology approach to Jesus dying for our sins, we often begin by teaching what’s called the Scapegoat Mechanism by anthropologists.
- It observes a pattern throughout history, and across cultures
- When something people desire is in limited supply and hotly contested, like land or power or wealth,
- people become rivals,
- And rivalry becomes conflict and violence and domination,
- And this tears at the social fabric of a group or society, leading to an “all against all” chaos
- Eventually, the group or society realizes: something has to be done to put an end to the chaos
- So the powers that be in the group or society come together and agree on a person or sub-group of people to blame for all the chaos:
- the scapegoat (usually a less powerful person or sub-group, so that there’s less chance someone will seek revenge)
- And the society’s demand for blame is quelled by killing or excluding the scapegoat (“all against all” is turned into “all against one”)
- In the immediate, it works to accomplish a period of restored unity (against the scapegoat)
- But of course, always the cycle restarts, eventually another scapegoat will be demanded
- So it’s a vicious cycle, not a real solution
- Sound like it describes a lot of society as we know it?
- And that brings us to Jesus.
- The Gospels of Jesus are so distinct because, yes, they are telling yet another story of the Scapegoat Mechanism (Jesus being scapegoated by the Roman Empire), just like all archaic religion…
- BUT they don’t try to hide it and justify it, they expose it!
- The Gospels emphasize: the scapegoat, Jesus, is innocent!
- In Jesus, God enters into the age-old human pattern of scapegoating
- To break its power,
- And to model how to interrupt scapegoating, to protect the vulnerable (those most likely to be scapegoated)
- Jesus dies not because God demands sacrifice, but because humanity demands sacrifice.
- (Similar there to the womanist good doubt perspective!)
From this perspective, though, all the traditional language of “Jesus died for your sins” can still hold true, just in a sort of inverse way from Substitutionary Atonement — showing a God who is anti-sacrifice rather than demanding sacrifice ==visual again==
- The shedding of Jesus’ blood is presented as “the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world” NOT because it upholds a God demanding sacrifice, BUT because it exposes the brokenness of us demanding sacrifice.
- Jesus “bore our sins in his own body” NOT because God needed someone to “really feel it” before he could set aside his wrath, BUT because we literally killed Jesus — human violence was literally borne by Jesus’ body.
- “By his wounds we are healed” because, in willingly sacrificing himself, Jesus shows humanity how to become like the God of self-sacrificial love, instead of reinforcing the human pattern of others-sacrifice. ==visual off==
To me, this is better theology! This makes sense!
- It doesn’t have any of the problems of God being violent, or having a split personality.
- Also, it by no means pulls any punches addressing the sin humanity are capable of,
- BUT it does that in a way that highlights the importance of relational responsibility and social ethics,
- NOT by telling individuals they’re horrible, sinful worms, who deserve eternal conscious torment.
It takes time to train ourselves to see "better theology" when we read the Bible, and not just see popular belief.
- But I want to encourage us: it is possible!
- I no longer default to seeing Substitutionary Atonement when I read the Bible,
- I default to seeing the better theology of the Scapegoat mechanism
- And, as a result, I have positive feelings about the Bible! (And more importantly, about God!)
Final words
So… another example of our good doubt and better theology strategies in action.
Both of these are really well-grounded strategies that put you in a ton of good company of people trying to cultivate life giving faith in the face of confusion around the idea of Jesus dying for our sins.
These strategies are unique and different but they’re definitely not opposed to one another. We ask the question - What if there is a more satisfying answer out there? A better picture of a loving God? And we have different avenues to find those answers, whether through discovering better theology or doubting the premises you’ve been given
We wonder what you think? What feels most natural and helpful for you?