I was kind of musing in a corner of my mind that Jesus acting as a sacrifice to god…really only makes sense in a cultural context where basically everyone around you is already sacrificing goats and chickens and bulls and whatever to their gods.

When that cultural context is removed (as in our culture where generally nobody slaughters animals as a sacrifice to any god) the whole crucifixion thing comes off as…weirdly pagan.

Like, HAVING to have a human/god sacrificed to god to…remove sin I guess…it only really makes sense if you have the cultural expectation that sacrificing things to some god is…just what you DO to get rid of sin or stuff that’s harmful like curses or whatever?

I’m not a bible scholar, and I know there’s tons of theology that’s already argued about Jesus “dying for our sins” into infinity.

I’m more vaguely looking at this from a layperson secular standpoint, where I’m thinking about the cultural context of “sacrifice” as it pertains to 2000 years ago, and how it pertains to now in our current culture. Like…wow, the culture and how we see things has totally shifted and the Jesus died thing is a really weird boondogle/relic of those ancient mindsets, isn’t it?

I read somewhere that for some people they also get better with age.

And for me that was true. My intrusive thoughts were worse as a teen and twenty something than now.

Then as I matured I relaxed, and also got proof from my own past behavior that I don’t act on any of it, which made me relax more.