Does Christ's atonement work?

It is the foundation and definition of Christianity: to accept Jesus and to be forgiven of our sins.

The idea is this:  Only clean souls can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  But because all mortals sin, nobody can return to the presence of God unless there was a way to remove those sins and become clean again.  Jesus took upon himself all of the sins of the world, for everybody who has ever lived and  will live, and was sacrificed in our place.  This way, justice is served, our sins are paid for, and we can return to Heaven.

I've looked at the atonement from many angles and I've had a difficult time understanding it.  I was raised as a Mormon, and I remembered a talk by Boyd K. Packer.  He compares the atonement to a contract for a monetary loan.

The parable is of a young man who goes into debt with a questionable creditor so that he can purchase things he wants.  He is unable to pay off the debt, and when his deadline comes, he is to be sent to prison.  The young man seeks mercy, the creditor seeks justice.  One of these two must lose.  But a friend arrives to pay the debt for the young man, and becomes the new creditor.  Because of this mediator, mercy and justice can both be served.

The video sums up by saying that we are all in a kind of spiritual debt, and it is a debt we can never pay.  The only way that everything can work out in the end is for Christ to pay our sins for us.

I'm only more confused.  These are the problems I see:

• There is no debt.
• Even if there were a debt, Christ could not pay it.
• Even if Christ could pay it, it would be unjust if he did.
• Even if Christ could pay it and it was just, he didn't do it.

 That's a lot to chew on, but taking a look at them:

• There is no debt.

At least, there's no reason to believe that there is one.  In the video, the young man reviewed the terms of the contract and signed it.  But in our case, the creditor has wiped our memories of the contract and hidden it from our view.  Would it be fair to expect us to uphold our end of the contract when he's taken such pain to make it seem as though it never existed?  We're told that we're in spiritual debt, but why should we believe this?  How could a debt have been accrued in the first place.  God is a perfect, immortal, omnipotent being, yet our silly imperfections somehow indebt us to him?  How can our sins hurt such a being and require a payment?

• Even if there were a debt, Christ could not pay it.

My previous actions and my intentions are an intrinsic part of me and my identity.  They are not "things" that can be traded or bartered with.  My sins could not be removed from me any more than my goodness could.

Christ could make amends for the wrongs we've done, he could heal the hurts and he could replace what was lost.  But to take responsibility for my sins and pay the price for them still leaves me as the individual who made those decisions - an imperfect sinner.  Those decisions were mine, made with my free will, and that cannot be undone.

God could forgive my decisions and proclaim me repentent and clean, but forgiveness is an act that takes place in the forgiver.  It is a reflection of them, how they are willing to look past that action, to accept it, to put it behind us.  Forgiveness is about them.  No one has to pay for anything in that case - it's just a decision God could make.  Why would Christ have to suffer tremendously simply to allow God to forgive?  The only answer is that it would be against Gods law to forgive unless someone paid the price for my sins.  This doesn't make sense because...

• Even if Christ could pay it, it would be unjust if he did.

If a man broke into your home and killed your family, you would not be satisfied to see the law punish someone else instead.  Even if that person volunteered to go to prison in the criminals place.  It serves no purpose to punish an innocent while the murderer walks free.  Justice is not served this way.

A system that would allow such a thing is broken.  It elevates the punishment to a level that exceeds any purpose it was originally meant to serve.  The punishment is no longer about meeting justice.  It is a system that simply demands blood be spilt - it doesn't matter who's.  That is not justice.  It is primitive and barbaric and it serves no purpose.

• Even if Christ could pay it and it was just, he didn't do it.

Christ did not die for us.

If Christ had really taken upon himself the sins of the world and sacrificed himself, he would have stayed dead.  He would have burned in Hell in our place.  He would have fallen from grace.  He would have gotten whatever we should have gotten.  He would have paid whatever we should have paid.

But he did not.  Being the son of God, he ate all of the sin and pain and punishment we should have gotten, and then went back to Heaven in perfect glory.

If it was a finite punishment that he could endure, why could we not pay for our own sins?  Even if it took us longer to do it, surely immortal souls with eternity to spend could spare the time to take responsibility for our own actions and suffer the consequences for ourselves.

The parable fails for other reasons as well.

To keep the parable consistent with the atonement, God would need to be the questionable creditor.  The creditor created terms that he knew the young man would not be able to easily meet.  This would imply that God also knew we would not be able to meet his terms - perfection - yet he demands it anyway.

Clearly God could have arranged for a more suitable contract that we could meet.  We know it could have been possible because that's the deal we struck with Christ.  If Christs terms are more manageable, then God's terms could have been too.  What reason could God have for saddling us with a contract he knew we couldn't keep, unless it was to somehow trap us, just as the creditor in the video trapped the young man?

In the parable, mercy is not served.  The young man simply shifts his debt to a new creditor - a creditor who seems to be more lenient and more willing to work with him, yes, but the debt remains.  Nothing was forgiven, just rearranged.

Justice and mercy could have been more easily met if the creditor had simply created a new contract with more suitable terms.  The contract only exists as long as one of the two parties wants to hold to it.  The creditor could have decided at any time to rip up the old one and create a new contract - and with it, the new law.  He wouldn't have to - that's why it would be merciful to do so.  And so with a new contract, both justice and mercy would have been fulfilled between the two original parties, and no savior would be necessary.

This strange arrangement of passing our unjust debt of pain onto someone else in order to become a better person just does not seem to work, no matter how I try to think it over

I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, the gospel of Good Nature; the gospel of Good Health. Let us pay some attention to our bodies. Take care of our bodies, and our souls will take care of themselves. Good health! And I believe the time will come when the public thought will be so great and grand that it will be looked upon as infamous to perpetuate disease. I believe the time will come when man will not fill the future with consumption and insanity. I believe the time will come when we will study ourselves, and understand the laws of health and then we will say: We are under obligation to put the flags of health in the cheeks of our children. Even if I got to heaven, and had a harp, I would hate to look back upon my children and grandchildren, and see them diseased, deformed, crazed -- all suffering the penalties of crimes I had committed.

I believe in the gospel of Good Living. You can not make any god happy by fasting. Let us have good food, and let us have it well cooked -- and it is a thousand times better to know how to cook than it is to understand any theology in the world.

I believe in the gospel of good clothes; I believe in the gospel of good houses; in the gospel of water and soap. I believe in the gospel of intelligence; in the gospel of education. The schoolhouse is my cathedral. The universe is my Bible. I believe in that gospel of Justice, that we must reap what we sow.

I do not believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the church. We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves. If I rob Mr. Smith and God forgives me, how does that help Smith? If I, by slander, cover some poor girl with the leprosy of some imputed crime, and she withers away like a blighted flower and afterward I get the forgiveness of God, how does that help her? If there is another world, we have got to settle with the people we have wronged in this. No bankrupt court there. Every cent must be paid.

The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say "charge it." "Put it on the slate." It will not do. For every crime you commit you must answer to yourself and to the one you injure. And if you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing. No forgiveness by the gods. Eternal, inexorable, everlasting justice, so far as Nature is concerned. You must reap the result of your acts. Even when forgiven by the one you have injured, it is not as though the injury had not been done. That is what I believe in. And if it goes hard with me, I will stand it, and I will cling to my logic, and I will bear it like a man.

And I believe, too, in the gospel of Liberty, in giving to others what we claim for ourselves. I believe there is room everywhere for thought, and the more liberty you give away, the more you will have. In liberty extravagance is economy. Let us be just. Let us he generous to each other.

I believe in the gospel of Intelligence. That is the only lever capable of raising mankind. Intelligence must be the savior of this world. Humanity is the grand religion, and no God can put a man in hell in another world, who has made a little heaven in this. God cannot make a man miserable if that man has made somebody else happy. God cannot hate anybody who is capable of loving anybody. Humanity -- that word embraces all there is.

- Robert Ingersoll, "How To Be Saved"  1880