Shrodinger's Theological Cat

I am writing this in hospital. I was having some seizures, down my left arm; when after one particularly painful incident, I went to A&E. Here, they diagnosed focal epilepsy, caused by tumours in the brain. At the moment, therefore, the staff are investigating to discover if these are primary cancers or secondary ones, derived from elsewhere in my body.

Sacrifice!

Jesus often asked, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of heaven?” It’s a common task of theology, apologetics and preaching, to search out new metaphors, analogies, to explain Christian truth, in ways that communicate to cultures far-removed from the first century.

One notion, unpopular these days, is ‘sacrifice’: the idea of someone dying for another, an innocent person assuming someone else’s suffering. It seems unfair, a case of cosmic child abuse, which has been used to justify oppression and exploitation, political and personal.