Good Friday, 2022

In his homily (YouTube 14:30-23:27) the priest said he is troubled by the basic conception of Good Friday--that Jesus died for our sins so that we might live.

Atonement theory states that Christ had to die. The priest explained that the "irreducible minimum" of atonement theory was:

Man was bad,
God was mad,
Somebody had to pay for it.

Referring to his own experience as a parent, the priest said that he believes that Good Friday is an example of unconditional love by the Father toward children who are behaving at their worst.

Though I admire his insightfulness, I'm not going to set aside decades of instruction on the priest's say-so that Atonement Theory is "repugnant." And there's no reason that the priest can't be right, too, that on Good Friday we should focus on God's limitless love rather than on how man nailed God to a tree.

As others are wont to say, Embrace the healing power of and.