My parents were Catholic and so they took it up themselves to raise their five children as Catholics. In order to make this happen, I endured 12 years of Catholic schools. I am afraid the Catholic school system let them down terribly. On the plus side I acquired a pretty good working knowledge of the Bible and religious doctrines, at least, as understood by the Roman Catholic Church.

The first big roadblock to me continuing as a Catholic was I could never understand why Jesus Christ had to die for our sins. Nobody could really explain the reasoning. It hardly seems fair to have an innocent man die an incredibly violent death in order to save the souls of the worlds’ sinners.

Now, I get that something had to be done. The sinners were doomed for Hell but why God determined that the only way this could happen is for Jesus to die. Wait, I take it back, I really don’t understand why God created a world of sinners that needed Jesus to die in order to save them. Jesus whole death sentence is based in the failure of humanity to uphold God’s laws. Something he knew was going to happen when he created Adam and Eve.

Why does God need to have such suffering in order to say, well OK, Jesus died a horrible death, by dying, Jesus showed how much he loved human beings so I will give all human beings a second chance to get into Heaven. Even more troubling to me is that God knew Jesus would willingly die on the cross so even before He set all of this in motion, why bother?

I was in a Spanish Church with a Christian friend. We were marveling at the artwork which depicted Jesus on the cross when she said “you know he would do all again. Die for our sins.” Which,OK, given Christian Myth, true. But why? This wonderment that Jesus would willingly suffer death to redeem man leaves out the important question, at least for me. God could ask anything, certainly less painful methods of execution, yet he demanded death, a rather unpleasant death at that. Why?

Based on this fundamental tenant of Christian faith, why would I believe that God is a loving God. He sounds more like a sadist to me. Pain and suffering is a part of the plan. Dear God, why?