Actually, violence and hell may go hand in hand. Can you imagine a greater violence than to create a fiery hell where people will burn eternally? Was the holocaust violence? Burning eternally might be considered crueler than that, as it goes on forever.
Now, as to Jesus dying, I don't want to derail this thread either. One of the major challenges to me as one who seeks to follow Christ is the blood atonement idea - that God the Father required that his Son be put to death in such a horrendous fashion for our salvation. Why does that give me pause? It strikes me as a possible holdover from those times and cultures when and where human sacrifice was not only acceptable but necessary.
It also seems to me to smack of a 'mystery' that leaves me skeptical. God decided to commit suicide (in a real sense) by deliberately laying down his life when he could have saved it. Etc. I don't want to get into this in any detail, but maybe you get the point. I sometimes have to question the whole atonement thesis. In three days Christ returned to rule the universe, seated at the right hand of God the Father. Hm! Yes, that was a sacrifice, but how many human beings who died in the holocaust, who died in Siberia, who died in Chinese Communist reeducation camps, who died as lepers, paupers, slaves, and on and on may have spent years suffering without reigning over the universe? Silly question? Maybe, but it keeps reoccuring to me.
When I focus on Christ I see him first as a champion of the poor, the outcasts, the despised Samaritan heretics, the publicans, the prostitutes, etc. This idea that God had to die in such an humiliating and painful way so that we can live eternally - well.... Traditional Christianity for many, probably most, but.... I guess I'm tempted by 'heresy' myself, though I somehow don't fret about it that much. We're saved by grace through a simple faith and not by special doctrines or precise rituals. At least. that's how I tend to feel.
