I’m 25. The whole time, I’ve never honestly been able to figure out what the big deal about the whole Jesus Thing is; no, I mean specifically the dying_on_the_cross part. I mean; he died, so what? You can say your sensible arithmetic statements about how ‘he paid for our sins’, but I thought it was money and potatoes that pay for stuff. If the wages of sin is death, who pays them to you? And since when was sin work? It’s all abstract, and I don’t know how to connect it to something as real as a nail sticking out of a foot. 
There are a million ways to explain that we can’t go_to_heaven_when_we_die because we have dumped God, and I’m more than satisfied with them; I just don’t see how the God-clone’s suicide helps that at all. 

My BRAIN woke me UP at 4am to tell me about this stuff and I was, like, so not impressed; I went back to sleep at 7am and woke at 11.30, and Garbett told me I was lazy. 

Anyway: Jesus was payment_for_sins to people who were used to trying to pay for their sins. The people in the olden days [well until, like, 50 years ago] were more worried about sin and heaven than we seem to be today; they avoided sin, or at least didn’t complain about the consequences. Hell, they even thought everything bad that happened was punishment from God. What they took from Jesus was that they could never pay, and that they didn’t need to.

We don’t pay for our sins anymore. We live with them. We work through them, and we work round them. We’ve (almost) solved our sin with safe sex and responsible drinking. It’s about damage control, birth control and designated drivers. And the gap between all that and our dreams is what the TV shows and tabloids are all about.
So we lower our expectations. We accept our hangovers and divorces. We vaccinate our daughters against STDs. We put up with it till we’re rich and famous, and then we get depressed about it.
And we quarantine the proper sinners in prisons.

Indeed, we are familiar with our sin. We have these ideals of happiness and a sense of how good life can be, but we also have this frustration that our I-want-it-now’s undermine these ideals. 
For example, the pleasures of gambling, alcohol and fat/sugar don’t justify their destruction of lives. Till recently, school canteens were banned from selling pies. 
We say lust is fine as long as it’s controlled, but for some reason we think public nudity should be illegal. 
Everybody knows that drugs and pornography cheapen joy.
And do you know that forty years ago, they were laughing at the church for condemning smoking? Ha ha. 
Yet we do trust human will enough for it to be the difference between miscarriage and an abortion; one is a tragedy, and the other a right. 
Oh, and I still haven’t found prostitution at the Career’s Expo. 

What is Jesus to these people; to us? Is he payment for sins? Does He have a different face to us? 
He certainly doesn’t solve sin in a very practical sense. He told us that we’ve probably sinned even before we’ve gotten out of the shower each morning. He told us don’t even think about escaping bad stuff. The universe is disintegrating. He said ‘If I go to Jerusalem they’ll kill me’. And he went to Jerusalem and they killed him. 
He said don’t even think about trying to be good enough to get to heaven; that just makes everything worse and whitewashed. 

It’s disgustingly simple. The whole Jesus-thing was God going, “Ok, so I hear you; life sucks and I should be rescuing you RIGHT NOW. Well, if I did that I’ll completely ruin the meaning of life. So I’m not going to. Tell you what: I’ll join in. [Emphasis added]. The president is coming to ground zero to get shot at and yelled at and sleep-deprived and killed and hold babies dying of contagious diseases in his arms . He incites us to blasphemy and murder, and promptly bounces back, saying “So what? Pain and death; whoop-dee-dee. You’ll have forgotten all about it in three million years.” He inspires us to live righteously and take what comes to us. And you’ll see in the end that all the bad stuff dies out and the only stuff left is all the God-components of life, all the stuff you have loved with a pure heart, all the magical moments of your favourite songs strung together.

One in five churches faces being lost

The number of churches is forecast to fall from 48,500 now to only 39,200 in 2030.

Today church leaders warn that the crisis threatens to devastate parishes, depriving local communities of important focal points. Conservationists said Britain was in danger of losing a large slice of its built heritage.

Responding to these concerns, the Telegraph is launching a campaign to save thousands of the nation’s churches from disappearing forever.

The threat is clear:

• Two churches are being closed down every week

• At least £1 billion is needed to repair all listed places of worship over the next five years

• Yet the Government spends just £25 million a year on repairs – far less than the £200 million needed

• Churches claim that local authorities discriminate against church-based community projects, reducing income still further

• Planned EU changes to VAT rules for repairs could see churches having to find another £10 million every year.

But the decline is not inevitable. Increases in government grants to repair churches and to back their community work, and minor changes to planning law, could head off the crisis.

The Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, today backed The Sunday Telegraph’s Save our Churches campaign, saying it was scandalous that the Church of England has to devote a sixth of its annual budget to maintaining its historic buildings on behalf of the nation.

Bishop Lowe accused the Government of lacking imagination in taking advantage of church buildings.

“We don’t want to just preserve these buildings, but to open them up. They should be used seven days a week, rather than for just a few hours on a Sunday,” he said.

Around 13,000 of the country’s 14,500 listed places of worship are Church of England premises, yet the Church currently receives only around £40 million in repair grants – half government money from English Heritage, half from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Congregations provide a further £70 million toward maintenance of their buildings, leaving a £75 million shortfall. If the gap isn’t filled soon, churches warn that large numbers of buildings will fall into disrepair.

Last year, Gordon Brown promised in the Spending Review to examine what help the Government could give to churches, which he acknowledged remained “at the heart of so many communities”.

Hugo Swire, the shadow culture secretary, yesterday lent his support to the campaign and called on ministers to work closer with churches to come up with a long-term solution.

“Churches are not only very often architecturally distinguished, but they also play a key role in rural life,” he said. “Church closures rip the heart out of the local community, but it is quite clear that they can not be expected to sustain this huge bill.”

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) also backed the campaign. Kate Gordon, its senior planning officer, said: “Places of worship account for much of our finest heritage, yet maintaining these buildings is often prohibitively expensive.”

Leading church figures claim that local authorities discriminate against appeals from churches for money for community projects, cutting off a revenue stream which could indirectly help pay for the maintenance.

One senior member of the General Synod – the Church’s parliament – said churches faced “barriers of prejudice”.

Crispin Truman, the chief executive of the Churches Conservation Trust, said: “Churches need to be adapted so that they are relevant to their communities. It must be done sensitively, but there must be small sacrifices if we are to save our heritage for the future.

“They can be an agent for social change and a place for people to meet. It is crucial that we keep them and help prevent society from fracturing even further.”