What If God Didn’t Need Jesus to Die?

Recovering the Non-Violent Heart of Christian Forgiveness

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I was eight years old when I first watched Jesus die.

I remember our church putting on a reenactment of the crucifixion. It wasn’t exactly professional: a few guys in bathrobes, some garden tools for props, and a bucket of fake blood someone had made from corn syrup and food colouring.

When they whipped the man playing Jesus, the fake blood splattered onto the white sheet he was wearing, and a few of us kids gasped.

Everyone said it was powerful. I just remember feeling a bit grossed out.

Afterward, one of the adults told me, “That’s what Jesus did for you.” I nodded, but I didn’t really understand what that mean, only that somehow my forgiveness had something to do with the blood.

When I was growing up, church taught me a lot about blood. It was everywhere: in the hymns we sang about power in the blood, in the communion cup that passed down the pew apparently, and in the sermons that said someone had to die so that God could forgive.

None of it struck me as strange at the time. It was simply how the story went. Jesus bled and died, we were saved, and that was that. As a kid, I never stopped to ask why. Why did there have to be…