Questioning Sacred Cows

Been thinking a lot lately about Doctrines I’ve been taught as fact my entire life. I decided about a year ago that I was going to put everything I’ve been taught on trial to see if it holds up to scrutiny and hard questions and I’m sad to say many of the things I’ve parroted over the years just don’t seem to add up with the bible or even common sense. There are teachings that you’d think went all the way back to when Jesus walked the earth but they weren’t even taught until the church got to Rome. To even challenge or even question some of these ideas is to be labeled a heretic that is trying to tickle the ears of people. The more I study the less I’m sure of the validity of what I believe. I’ve always been taught that the “True Gospel” is that we are all born sinners because of Adam and Eve in need of a savior and that Jesus came and died for our sins so that we can be right with God. I’m not so sure about that anymore.

Two things recently I’ve really been questioning are the Penal Substitution view of Jesus’ work on the Cross and the teaching of Original Sin. They both raise some uncomfortable questions that I believe are legitimate questions but to even suggest that there may be problems with them gets you blacklisted.

Here in our culture we've primarily accepted a view called Penal Substitution as the reason for Jesus having to come to earth and die for our sins. This view basically has the idea of you being on trial and guilty of a crime with a penalty of death when you are about to be sentenced Jesus comes in and takes your sentence and dies for you. So when Adam and Eve rebelled man was separated from God and inherited their sins. Jesus had to come and pay the price for our sins and take the wrath of God on himself to restore our relationship.  Now that I've gotten the description out of the way here are the questions.

What kind of relationship does this give us with the Father? If it weren't for Jesus he would've destroyed us. It seems like it should make us love Jesus but be wary of the Father.

Was forgiveness of sins done at the cross? Can you really forgive if someone has to pay? If I have an outstanding debt with Bank of America and someone else pays the debt for me did Bank of America do anything special? They didn’t forgive my debt they merely took the payment from someone else.

Also my questions about this lead into my questions about Original Sin. This is the view that man is automatically guilty of sin at birth because we are born with Adam’s sin nature. So we’re all under the Wrath of God just because we were born. How is that fair? If we really believed that then why do most reasonable Christians teach that babies that die go to heaven? If they are guilty of damnation automatically why do they get a pass until a certain age? How can we choose to not be under the wrath of God when we didn’t get a chance to choose if we wanted to be under it in the first place? We acknowledge that it wouldn’t be fair for a baby to assume his parents IRS debt but it’s fair for us to inherit the debt of Adam and Eve?

These are some things I’m wrestling with and the more I study these things the more empathy I have for those that bitterly oppose Christianity and what it projects. These are the questions that get you cursed at and rejected by Christians and it’s a scary place to be and I see why many just say forget it and leave all together. That’s not what I’m going to do but I can understand it.