Hi
BasicHumanUnit Thanks for your reply, and I hope you can appreciate
the premise that the Bible and symbolism of Jesus is NOT a necessary condition.
So you don't even have to argue any of this which is not a requirement to believe in.
However, since you asked
1. The oversimplified way I can explain the meaning behind "God sending Jesus to die to bring redemption"
is comparing the process of "establishing Justice" to
the process of downloading a program into a computer system corrupted with Virus bugs.
The system cannot debug itself, if all the files are corrupted and will merely reinfect and replicate the bug.
So in order for the program to find and fix these bugs, it must first be DOWNLOADED into the infected system,
then that system is KILLED and REBOOTED. After Rebooting, the anti virus program
can infiltrate through all the operating systems and files, and clean up the bugs and prevent more such infections.
So if Jesus represents Justice on a higher collective level,
this "perfect" universal justice gets EMBODIED into the physical world and psychological conscience
of HUMANITY that is otherwise selfishly flawed and biased toward self interests and cannot achieve "equal justice" for everyone.
Then the "killing off" or sacrifice of justice, in being "divinely forgiven" is not paid back by retribution as human justice calls for.
Instead, the positive forces of this HIGHER "Restorative Justice" corrects, cleans up and HEALS the causes of injustice
or the bugs in the human system, corrupting society and institutions by human greed and selfish ego that otherwise lead to self destruction.
The idea of "resurrection" means RESTORING the pure justice AFTER injustice.
Bringing back Justice after the spirit of justice and peace is KILLED by injustice and war.
This can only occur by "higher" forgiveness, where human ideas of justice focus on punishment
and retribution, which again leads to "vicious cycles" of war and tribal conflict to punish each other as we see in politics.
Faith in RESTORATIVE JUSTICE means forgiving the past and healing relations
so both sides of conflicts or injustice WORK TOGETHER to build better solutions and prevent abuse/injustice in the future.
That takes a lot more faith than normal people usually have.
You can call this mythical, but others credit "God and Jesus" for this higher faith and ability to forgive and heal "by grace alone."
2. As for real life proof of such Restorative Justice healing,
there are both personal testimonies and medical studies on healing done through forgiveness/restorative therapy.
www.ariseandshine.org
www.christianhealingmin.org
www.spiritual-healing.us/about.html
Most people cannot fully grasp this level of healing unless they or a friend they know is reliable
have experienced spiritual healing and can see it for themselves how the process works.
If you are looking at this from the outside, for the first time, it may not seem real or make sense.
That is natural.
All the people, including doctors, who changed their minds about spiritual healing
at first thought it had to be mythical or fraud. But after they saw proof and even did
their own studies and observations, that is what changed their minds.
Dr. Scott Peck wrote his book "Glimpses of the Devil" after he totally changed
his mind after observing two patients treated for incureable Schizophrenia by these methods.
Dr. Francis MacNutt not only found out spiritual healing wasn't "Dark Age" myth,
but he started a nonprofit that has successfully helped and trained people in spiritual healing
as a natural process that works with science and medicine.
Dr. Phillip Goldfedder is a Jewish Neurosurgeon who changed fields and went into
spiritual healing full time after he saw proof it worked better than surgery.
I recommend replicating the medical studies by applying healing to
both shorter term conditions that can be documented faster, such as
bulimia, anorexia and cutting disorders, as well as more serious conditions
such as pedophilia or other criminal sickness that require safe detention
and longterm treatment to prevent endangering more people.
The biggest leap that nontheists may have to make is if medical studies
can prove that ONLY "prayers in Christ Jesus Authority" can overcome
the serious Demonic and Satanic cult oppression, addictions and voices.
And nothing else works to cure those serious cases but Christian deliverance methods.
And the biggest leap that Christians may have to make is
accepting the fact that just because people receive this spiritual
healing in Christ Jesus, that DOESN'T mean everyone will
"convert" to Christianity. Many either stay secular
and in one case that Dr. Peck observed, the patient he helped
lost interest in religion and went into medical science.
Buddhists and Muslims may keep with their native affiliations
and just add the understanding of Jesus and forgiveness to what
they already teach and practice.
But in general, it COULD be proven through statistics
that people who report degrees of
FORGIVENESS of past issues correlate proportionally with success in healing, recovery and reconciliation
while
UNFORGIVENESS correlates with failure to resolve or heal of ill conditions in mind, body or relations with others
Many studies on forgiveness have already been done.
I would like to see more focus on applying these methods
to other physical, mental and criminal illness to help more
people and save more lives from disease and destruction.
