A different metaphor

I found this guy's writings last week, and have been reading them every chance I get. He's some animator guy named Derek Flood, who thinks and writes like me. … Only probably better! (Yes my gentle readers… that is possible.) Here's the thing. I don't read other people's blogs. I have so much I need to learn that wading though someone else's emotional swamps, looking for nuggets of inspiration or truth is just not something I can justify doing. So when I stumble across a blog that just rips open my heart and articulates its unexplored corners, I gotta talk about it.

The first article I read was about the need for a different metaphor when it comes to Christ's work on the cross. The way it has been cast for us evangelicals, (and Christianity in general for hundreds of years) is though a legal metaphor. God is an impartial judge who sentences us to eternal torture because Adam sinned, and we all do to. But here comes Jesus the great lawyer who discovers a loophole! He dies in our place to satisfy justice and we get off scott free. Flood examines the other alternative that existed before the legal paradigm came about. The Christus Victor model. I always thought that model was a kooky liberal attempt to minimize sin and such. But flood make a powerful argument for it here:

http://sharktacos.com/God/cross_intro.shtml

Here are some other articles I found amazing:

http://sharktacos.com/God/hell.html

http://sharktacos.com/God/suffering1.shtml

Derek is not a Universalist. Yet. But I don't see how his conclusions could lead him anywhere else. And if they do, I'll be really fascinated to see how that happens.

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