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[jimwalton]

> You said this which is why I contested with Jesus paying for anyone's sin. How can he be against the above and also be okay with Jesus dying for anyone's sins even voluntarily?

Substitutionary atonement is a common theme in the Bible: a sheep being killed for the sins of the person or the nation, a scapegoat being released into the wilderness symbolically carrying the sins of the nation on his back. But substitutionary atonement is never one human being punished for the sins of another human. Human sacrifice was an abomination. Jesus, however, being God, voluntarily offering himself for the sins of the world is a different dynamic. The deity puts himself, by love, in the place of those who cannot help themselves to atone for them is an acceptable act, not an act of generational punishment—someone being unfairly whacked for someone else's mess-up.

> but a family has nothing to do with the crime. It was David that did the crime and therefore should solely be punished for the crime.

Wrong. David had trained his boys. They were not unjustly punished for what David did. David was a bad father, and he raised wicked boys who generated their own wickedness. David instilled his sins in his boys: they were adulterers and murderers. God punishes them for their own sin, but it's a punishment on David as well. He watches 4 of his sons die because of his own sin: he trained them to be bad boys (sinners).

> If the child resulted because of natural consequence of some action the next child would have died the same way but as we see God lets the child live.

The child did result because of natural consequences: consensual sex. But there's reason to believe the baby was of mal health. The next child with Bathsheba, Solomon, was healthy, and he lived. Just because God allows one to die a natural death doesn't mean that all subsequent children will also die.

> So that contradict the notion that they assumed God was intervening when it was just natural consequences. It is a God actively speaking and actively intervening in this scenario.

Yes. We don't just throw a blanket over everything and say, "Everything has to be the same." We have to discern what the pieces mean and what's going on.

> because it calls for the dismissal of the notion that each person will be judged according to his actions and his thoughts and punished for his actions alone when clearly God has not done that in the past.

It really doesn't. I am blessed to be an American. I didn't earn or deserve that, but I'm an American because of my parents. I wasn't born in Somalia. There are consequences for our decisions. My parents are Americans because about 12 generations ago one of my ancestors immigrated from Europe. For generations my family has been Christian, and I was raised the same way. In ways it's a lot like the Abrahamic blessing. But that doesn't mean I'm not accountable to God for my actions and thoughts. I very much am. We all are. Whether born in Somalia or America, to a Christian family or a Muslim one, whether religious or secular, we all bear some of the marks of our upbringing (both good and bad), we have certain sins or struggles because of how we were raised, and we have generated plenty of stuff on our own. Some of it has been built into me (some good that I nurture and some bad that I try to defuse), and a lot of it I choose. I am not judged for my parents' sins (no one is), though I have been shaped by my parents. I am accountable to God all on my own.

[connectic]

thanks for the information. I think it's help us.

[jimwalton]