I think it’s kind of a copout, to expect that we’re ‘saved by Christ’.
I’ve never been a fan of the notion of ‘vicarious atonement’ - I think it’s too easy, and lazy (and I am aware that this, also, will probably offend many here.)
It doesn’t take just ‘repentance’, to get your life in order. Sometimes, that just makes you feel like you’ve ‘paid your dues’, and now you’re OK.
It requires inner WORK, to really change ourselves and the circumstances of our lives.
Jesus - and just saying ‘I Believe’ - can never do that. You’re just floating on a cloud, then. There’s a certain substance that is missing there, and that’s probably why the churches are failing, and people are leaving them.
We have to change the way that we THINK and believe- and that requires far more than just mouthing the acknowledgement that we may have ‘done wrong’ here and there, and ‘accepting Christ as our Savior’. That apology and declaration doesn’t show you any way OUT - and laying it all on Jesus is just another copout.
I don’t believe that very many of us are really ‘sinners’. I think most of us are just stuck in *situations*; and just as our educational system has failed us in recent decades, our religions have become moribund and are no longer giving us the inspiration that we need for the times and situations within which we are living.
(Putting on my ‘flame suit’ now...)