Cobus van Wyngaard – How unique was Jesus suffering?

my contemplations cobus

Cobus van Wyngaard – How unique was Jesus suffering?

An article by a Theology student at TUKS (Cobus van Wyngaard – My contemplations blog).  This is what the University of Pretoria produces.  One needs to ask, are the students cheating on their exams or are the professors teaching this blasphemy?  I opt for the latter.

Cobus totally fails or deliberately does not want to realise that Jesus Christ took on the sin of all mankind upon Himself and God turned away from Him for a short time when he was on the cross.  This act alone was more painful than anything anyone experienced in the history of this world, no one else died for the sins of mankind Cobus, no one!

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How unique was the suffering of Jesus?

by Cobus van Wyngaard

I don’t know when this question struck me the first time, but attending an Alpha course again tonight it struck me again: How unique was the suffering of Jesus really?

I’ve heard it countless times, how Christians talk about how bad the suffereing of Christ was. About the extreme pain, how the extreme pain Jesus experienced was something that no one could even imagine. Add to that the fact that he was innocent, which supposedly makes the pain even worse!

But the more I think about it, the more this sound like utter nonsense. I mean, many others was crucified, many of them similarly innocent (understand the Roman government of the time and the role of crucifixions in keeping people in line to understand my comment). Thousands over the ages have been tortured and killed innocently, and I believe the human specie only got better at torture as time goes by.

It’s as if Christians have this extreme fear of finding out that Jesus was just another human like me and you. Just a plain crusifixion would have been extremely bad, just as bad as it would have been for any other human. You know that it was an early Christian heresy to downplay the humanity of Christ? But by amplifying the uniqueness of his suffering, ain’t we downplaying his humanity? As if the normal suffering that a human would undergo isn’t enough, it had to be worse than anything you could imagine.

I don’t doubt the uniqueness of Christ. But I believe that much of what Jesus did was not unique to him. The Bible doesn’t have a problem with this. It talks about sharing in the suffering of Christ (Rom 8:17; Phil 3:10), about following Paul like he follows Jesus (1 Cor 11:1), about disciples doing the same things that Jesus did (Matt 10). Jesus was imitated, followed. Others have done similar things. In many respects what Jesus broughts was not supposed to be unique, but rather point to something that is common! Maybe his suffering is not supposed to be unique either. Maybe his suffering is exaclty that which so many Christians suffered while being persecuted, which so many slaves suffered on slaveboats, which so many poor have suffered at the hands of the rich. The extreme example of what humanity is capable of! The value of the severity of his suffering then is not in it being worse that what others suffer, but exactly in it’s being just as bad as what others are suffering!

Again, I don’t doubt the uniqueness of Christ. But I don’t like the unnatural way that it gets enforced, and can’t see why this is neccesary. Had I been an outsider I might have asked if there is something these people are trying to hide by overemphasizing this so much?

source:  http://mycontemplations.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/how-unique-was-the-suffering-of-jesus

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My comment below to Cobus van Wyngaard which I am sure he will delete as he has done with previous comments of mine at http://teoatup.wordpress.com.  You are welcome to come comment here Cobus, I allow comments even by those who insult and deny Jesus Christ.

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