
which Kenneth Engel challenges:

I will wimp out and admit that I never liked the metaphor of
Jesus "paying" for our sins in the sense that many Christians
accept as literal. The point is that God understands the suffering
we go through, not just intellectually like when we watch
the Somalians on TV, but _really_ understands, He can "feel" 
our pain. This fact is manifested by Jesus' life. We can argue
that someone in history might have suffered more than Jesus,
we can think of more horrible torture than crucifixion, we can
think of cases of betrayal and fruitless effort leading to
worse despair, but the main point is that Jesus is in the
trenches with us, He is in everyone, whatever I do to the least
of humanity I do to Him, and whatever I do for the least of
humanity I do for Him.

Now, to reconcile this with the existence of hell is beyond my
capabilities, but that wasn't my goal.


Thankfully our moderator is surprising.


As I re-read this I must admit that this is more of a description
of my faith than an explanation, but perhaps that's all
I can do, hopefully that's all I have to do.