Difficult Questions from Young People, Part I
”Daddy, why was Jesus on that Cross?” How to answer when one’s five-year-old starts asking theological questions.
Oh, yeah, that’s an easy one, right? ”To save us from our sins, dear.”
But what a can of worms that opens up: ”What are ’sins’? How does Jesus-on-that-Cross ’save’ us? What does ’save’ mean?” Even apart from the difficulty of explaining Substitutionary Atonement (with a little Original Sin thrown in) to a five-year-old, I’ve never been particularly satisfied by the traditional heavy emphasis of the Subst. Atnmt. theory as the explanation of God’s relationship with us in and through Christ.
So, rewind, and approach the question from the point of view that I use to explain Jesus-on-that-Cross to myself. That’s a somewhat fuzzy mixture of ”God provided for us, in Jesus’ death on the Cross and His subsequent resurrection, the ultimate lesson in the meaning of sacrifice: that sacrifice is giving up what we think we want in order to receive what God knows we need” with ”In Jesus’ death on the Cross, God’s participation in our lives as a fully human being is completed: through this, we know that God has truly experienced loss, fear, abandonment, and death.” Like I said, a little fuzzy, hmm? And not exactly any easier to explain to a five-year-old than Substitutionary Atonement.
Rewind again, and finally punt with an essentially secular explanation: ”There were a lot of very mean, bad people who hated what Jesus was saying and teaching and decided to kill him to keep him quiet. They hated him so much that they chose a very painful way of killing him. They were very, very bad people.” (Note the careful omission of who, exactly, those ”bad people” were. You’ll not find me trying to get into the complexities of Judaeo-Roman politics, no sirree!)
Is it really that much of a punt, though? I don’t think so. First of all, it’s true: the Powers of Jesus’ time didn’t like what he was saying, and really did want to keep him (permanently) quiet. They did choose a particularly vicious way of killing him: crucifixion was as much about making examples of people as it was a method of execution. The ”very bad people” explanation leaves the door open for later discussion of the radicalness of Jesus’ teaching, and I don’t think it closes the door on later explication of the uniqueness of Jesus’ role in God’s relationship with humanity.
Now, time to go study up on ”Daddy, how come Jesus wasn’t there when those girls went to look for him? And what’s a ’tomb’?”