Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 22
22 Christianity – A Journey from Facts to Fiction Adam and Eve abolished after the Crucifixion? Did those who believed in Jesus Christ as as the ‘Son of God,’ if they were women, cease to have painful childbirth? Did the believing men start earning their livelihood without exerting themselves to manual labour? Did the propensity to sin cease to pass on to the future generations and innocent children started being given birth to? If the answer to all of these questions were to be ‘yes’, then of course there would be some justification in seriously contemplat- ing the Christian philosophy of Sin and Atonement. But alas, the answer to all these questions is no, no and no. If nothing seems to have changed since the Crucifixion, both in the Christian and non-Christian worlds, then what are the meanings of Atonement? Even after Jesus Christ as the sense of common justice continues to dictate to human beings all over the world that if any person commits a sin, punishment of that sin has to be given to that person alone and to none else. All men and women must suffer the consequences of their sins by themselves. Children are always born innocent. If this is not the truth then God’s attribute of Justice is thrown overboard. We as Muslims believe that all Divine books are based on eter- nal truth and none can make any claims contrary to that. When we come across inconsistencies and contradictions in any so-called Divinely revealed book, our attitude is not that of total denial and rejection but that of cautious and sympathetic examination. Most of the statements of the Old Testament and the New Testament, which we find at variance with the truth of nature, we either try to reconcile by reading some underlying cryptic or metaphoric message, or reject part of the text as the work of human hands