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{"id":38971,"date":"2016-12-22T09:13:20","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T14:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=38971"},"modified":"2016-12-19T09:10:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T14:10:53","slug":"remembering-needs-many-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/12\/remembering-needs-many-christmas.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Needs of the Many at Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"Star$ <\/p>\n

Sacrifice in the sense of animals killed so that their blood can be poured out as an offering to a deity is something unimaginably foreign to most people\u00a0in the English-speaking world today. And yet it was that \u2013 and not the modern sense of giving one\u2019s life to save others \u2013 that was in view when the term was applied to the death of Jesus in the New Testament. I\u2019ve blogged before about problems with some of the ways that people have tried to address this \u2013 in particular, what is known as the \u201cpenal substitution\u201d theory of atonement<\/a>.\u00a0Perhaps in this case it makes sense to keep the term but rethink how it is understood. Jesus died to save us from a way of life that perpetuates cycles of violence and hatred. His death accomplishes that by embodying in himself, while bearing the title of Messiah and king, a preference for his own death to\u00a0the taking of the lives of others in an attempt to preserve his own life or safety.<\/p>\n

That is something worth commemorating, both through traditional Christmas stories, as well as when that prototypical example receives a faint echo in a Star Trek movie<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"