Have you ever noticed how the immaculate conception of Mary undermines the crucifixion of Jesus?
First, it's important to distinguish the Immaculate Conception of Mary from the Incarnation of Jesus, where Jesus took on human flesh in Mary's womb. Most people confuse the former for the latter.
According to Catholics, the "immaculate conception" of Mary refers to the generative conception of Mary by the sexual relations of her parents. What makes that conception "immaculate" is that, at the moment Mary was conceived through the natural sexual relations of her parents, God decided to preserve Mary's soul from the stain of original sin.
Everyone else on the planet, however, who is conceived the same way, is not so lucky. The question is why?
Only Mary, and Mary alone, did God decide to preserve from this stain of original sin from the very first moment of her conception.Why? Well, according to the Catholic Church it's because, in anticipation of her role as the Mother of his Son, God infused her with
sanctifying grace that prevented the effects of original sin from effecting or staining her soul. Talk about "saving grace"!!
As a result of this divine intervention, Mary becomes the only perfect purely human follower of God, as such, for she is purely human, where Jesus is both human and divine.
Yet this raises some serious fundamental questions. Is Mary so "good" because she was preserved from the effects of the stain of original sin? Would she, or could she, have been as good, or anywhere near as good, if she had not been preserved from such sin?
Think about it: preserving her soul from the stain of original sin is like removing a gene for addiction from a person who comes from a long family line of addicts, and then praising them for being the first person in their family for not becoming an addict.
To put it in terms we can relate to, imagine a doctor in a maternity ward at a hospital with a hundred pregnant women in it. All of these mothers-to-be are addicted to drugs, which ensures their babies will be also. But the doctor has a special "miracle" vaccine that he can administer to these mothers-to-be that will ensure not one infant will be born with the addiction of the mother. The doctor can administer this vaccine to all of the mothers just as easily as he could administer it to only one of them, just by having them drink a glass of water. Not only that, but the vaccine in that glass of water is not only as free of cost as water or air itself, but would even instantly cure the addiction of the mothers-to-be as well, ensuring a better upbringing for each child. But the doctor decides a better "plan" is to only administer that miracle vaccine to one mother-to-be, and require the rest to strive to follow the example of how that cured patient lives and raises their child. This way, the one fully cured pregnant woman will become the yardstick the others should measure themselves by, and their children by, leaving the other 99 to feel ashamed of their inability to be as "immaculate" as the one given the "miracle" vaccine by that doctor.
Now, ask yourself a question: Who of the 99 would not be infuriated to have discovered they had not been given such a "miracle" vaccine, especially when they learn that that vaccine had been developed from the taxes (in the form of the tithings they give at their Church every week) they pay, just so blame and shame could be relied on instead as a preferred tool by that doctor, at least for the other 99, for failing to live up to the same standard as the one who had received such a vaccine?
And THIS, Christians claim, is "God's divine plan!"
Wouldn't it have been more impressive, and been a far more important example, for Mary to have resisted the temptation to sin if she'd been born with the stain of original sin, like everyone else on the planet, than to praise her for not sinning due to being born without the spiritual predisposition for committing sin in the first place? That's like worshipping a person for not being a serial killer who wasn't born with a predisposition for being a psychopath.
The bigger question such an idea raises is why does God choose to preserve only Mary from such a sin stain, especially if doing so in anyway helped to enable her to be so "good," and no one else? Clearly, if God can do this for Mary - before having Jesus killed - He could just as easily do it for every other member of the human race.
So, why choose only to do it for Mary and no one else? And why then require all of those suffering from such a moral defect to have to save themself from the eternal agony in an everlasting Auschwitz oven called hell through their ability to demonstrate their "belief" they had picked the right brand of Christianity, of which there are over 40,000 different forms today and counting?
This is where the idea of the immaculate conception undermines the need for, let alone any beneficial effects from, the crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus.
Why?
Because it raises the biggest questions of all:
Was it because God could think of no other way, or no better way, of addicting us to anything offering salvation from eternal damnation?
Was it her "immaculate conception" that enabled her to be assumed into heaven bodily, while everyone else must suffer and die here on earth in the "hope" and "faith" that, despite the universality of our mortality, we must bet there is more than this?
So, God's "great plan" is to brutally sacrifice Jesus, not to remove the stain of original sin as God did with Mary prior to such a sacrifice, but to merely "forgive" us for the effects that such a stain inevitably causes.
Pointing out this problem to the most devoted of Christian followers can trigger such followers into wanting to murder you for daring to question their conception of "God." And while those same followers will insist their Christianity teaches them to defend moral absolutes, which is how they can know they alone are correct to denounce murder as wrong, they will also rationalize the murdering of anyone who questions their "beliefs" as "defending" the God of those moral absolutes.
Why do they feel any need to defend the most powerful being in the universe? Well, it's not so much a "need" to defend such a God, as much as they are only too ready to jump at the chance to do so.
Why would any "believer" have any desire to jump at the chance of defending the most powerful being in the universe? Because they "believe" that doing so is the best way to avoid the hell or purgatory their sin-stained soul predisposes them toward, for the stain of original sin means we are born with a moral compass that is preset to point us toward sin (which is why the Catholic Church is needed, to condition us away from our preset sinful condition and guide us all toward salvation like Moses guiding his "chosen people" out of Egypt), so they can avoid the impossible task of removing such a stain and go straight to heaven.
Why do they have any fear of hell at all? Because while God could have given everyone an "immaculate conception" that preserved everyone on the planet from the stain of original sin, the same way he did with Mary, doing so would have prevented God from requiring everyone to be addicted to the sacraments (which operate like spiritual vaccines) offered through the Roman Catholic church.
Only with such an addiction can Catholics live with the conviction that they are "working out their salvation in fear and trembling" of God's righteous and eternal wrath, doled out to the damned in hell, while also being convinced that living their life in such "fear and trembling" makes them smarter, and certainly more morally enlightened, than anyone who lives their life any other way.
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