Several words come to mind in dictionary fashion to me.
Atonement vs repentance
In Christianity we do not or cannot make our sins go away because in order to do so we need to be God since God chooses to harden hearts or not to do so. So We have "grace" that comes to us which allows us to change our minds (metanoia) where a transformation happens in the "heart". The reason Jesus is needed is that Jesus is God so by knowing what Jesus did and said we have more chance to come to grace.
I deeply appreciate the importance of grace. My Hebrew name, Chana (Hannah, Anne), means grace. So you and I share a very important foundation.
Where we differ is this. I don't see Jesus being necessary for the expression of God's grace. My job is to repent. And when I do that, God forgives. He casts my sins into the sea and remembers them no more. He is not bound by some outside set of rules; he is not constrained by anything. He forgives because he can, because he WANTS to. He doesn't need any sacrifices in order to do so, whether it be a lamb or grain or wandering Jewish preacher. All he asks is our repentence.
Psalm 51
18 For You do not wish a sacrifice, or I should give it; You do not desire a burnt offering.
19 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; O God, You will not despise a broken and crushed heart.
I do not know why jews killed animals at the temple for thousands of years if sin is just animal instincts.
It's because human beings find meaning and expression in symbolic acts. Remember that these sacrifices were eaten. In all human cultures around the world and down through time, breaking bread, sharing a meal, has been a common means of repairing relationships. When we say the word "sacrifice," the modern mind instantly focuses on only the first part, the ritual slaughter. But the sacrifice isn't finished until the meat is cooked and eaten. It is a meal shared with God, symbolically healing the relationship that is torn when we sin. It may help if you think of it as a kind of BBQ dinner that you invite God to.
In your gospels, Jesus tells the story of the Prodigal Son. Recall that at the end of the story, that part of the repair of the relationship between the father and the son was the killing of the fatted calf. When you read this story, do you focus in on the slaughter? No! You are like, OMG the father threw a PARTY! They stuffed themselves silly!
That is what the sacrifices were. A party. A meal shared between father and prodigal child returned.
God himself came to make you part of his family
All people are God's children. He loves us because he made us. It's really not a complicated thing.
I am not 100% clear on how Judaism sees it but I think if a person dies and has a bitter heart they cannot be with God.
Fruiteloop, I have no idea what happens after death. Perhaps there is an afterlife, perhaps not. It may be that you are 100% correct. Your idea does have a certain amount of poetry to it. We will all find out someday.
But for now, my focus is on this life. How will I love and serve God right now, right here, this day.
So Christianity was a better way for God to bring people to himself.
If Jesus draws you closer to Hashem and inspires you to be a better person, then by all means, be a Christian. I support you. I hope and pray that you will become the very best Christian you can be.
But what you don't see is that there are many other people in this world who also love and serve God, and who also have an intimate relationship with him, and they do it without Jesus. I realize that your New Testament says that Jesus is the only way, but this just doesn't match up with reality. He is YOUR way. He is not my way.
There is no worse feeling than taking a chance and opening up and sharing your heart with someone, and them turning around and invalidating your experience, telling you it's not real, that it can't be real, that you must be imagining it. Please believe me when I say that I acutely feel God's presence, his endless love, and his almost frightening power. It moves me to awe, to worship. God is the axis around which my life turns. .Just as I am able to put my theological disagreement aside and support you in your Christian walk, I so wish that you could do the same for me.
But there are parts of the torah that do make it such that there is a reason Jesus would be God.
I know that the idea that God himself loved you so much that he died for you is very dear to your heart, and I'm not here to undermine that faith. But Fruiteloop, the Torah never mentions Jesus. Not even once. When Christians read the Torah, they see what they expect to see.
I'm going to share a little something from my life. It is not intended to make you give up Jesus or change your beliefs. It is meant to show you that another person can have all the same experiences you have, and yet view them in a different way.
As you know, I was raised Christian. I learned Jesus from my mother's knee. And Fruiteloop, I loved Jesus with all my heart! Do you know the praise song "Breathe"?
Over the course of my life, I developed a deep and profound love for the Jewish people, and very, very much wanted to become a Jew. But my belief in Jesus prevented me from converting. In order to complete geirus, the convert has to leave behind any religion they previously had. The problem was, I KNEW Jesus. I felt his presence at times. I believed when I prayed that, in a fashion, I could hear him speak to my heart. How could I simply say that these experiences weren't real? To do that would be to say that I was crazy, and I couldn't live with the idea that my entire perception was that skewed and unreliable. It would drive me mad.
One Shabbat evening a couple of my male Jewish friends were walking me home from shul. Yeah, I was a NUTTY Christian--I faithfully attended church every Sunday, but would also attend synagogue every Friday night. As the three of us walked, I told them that I just didn't understand why, if it was okay for me to be a Christian, that I would need to give up those beliefs in order to become a Jew.
And that is when they explained shituf to me. Shituf is the Hebrew word that means association. It refers to when a person truly does love and worship God, but mistakenly associates God with a thing, or creature, or person, when God is none of those. It was explained to me that when a Christian looks up into heaven, they do in fact see God, but they view God through glasses that have the word Jesus etched on them.
And in that moment, I
recognized myself in that illustration. And the dominos began to fall. All those experiences? They were all quite real. They were not imagined. But they were not experiences with Jesus. It had never been Jesus. It had always been God. It was God whom I loved. God whose presence I sensed. God whose voice my heart heard. And God whom I had always loved and served. I didn't need to change religions at all. All I needed to do was see the God I had always had... a little more clearly. All I needed to do, was take off the glasses.
When that Shabbat was over, I began my conversion.
And please know that it NEVER bothers me when others disagree. I actually prefer conversations with people who DO disagree because they are the ones who make me think in new ways. If I lived in an echo chamber, only talking with people who agreed with me, I would never grow.