You see a runaway trolley speeding down a track. Five people stand in its path, unaware of the impending disaster. You’re standing by a lever. If you pull it, the trolley will switch tracks—but there’s one person on the other track, and they’ll be hit instead.
This classic thought experiment forces us to ask difficult ethical questions. Is it better to act and sacrifice one life to save five? Or is it morally worse to intervene and make that choice? Now, let’s take this dilemma to an even bigger stage—one that stretches beyond philosophy into faith.
What if God faced this situation? Could we say that the crucifixion of Jesus was God’s version of pulling the lever? If so, does that mean Christianity is just divine utilitarianism—the idea that the greatest good for the greatest number justifies sacrifice? Or is there something deeper happening here?
Why Didn’t God Just Avoid the Problem?
A common question about Christianity is: if God is all-powerful, why didn’t He just prevent the need for Jesus to die in the first place? If He created everything, why didn’t He set up a world where sin and suffering never happened?
This is where free will comes in. A world without suffering would mean a world where people never had the ability to choose between good and evil. Without choice, love wouldn’t be real—it would be forced, like a machine following its programming. So God allowed human freedom, knowing that real love requires real choices. But with that freedom came brokenness, mistakes, and injustice. The trolley problem—the reality of moral dilemmas—became inevitable.
So, what did God do? He didn’t yank people off the tracks and override their free will. Instead, He stepped onto the tracks Himself.
Jesus Wasn’t Just a Victim
At first glance, Jesus’ crucifixion looks like a cold calculation: sacrifice one perfect person to save many imperfect ones. That sounds a lot like pulling the lever in the trolley problem. But here’s the key difference: in the trolley problem, the person on the track has no choice. They are simply a victim of the situation.
Jesus, however, chose to be there.
When He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest, He knew exactly what was coming. He even asked if there was another way. But in the end, He willingly walked toward suffering, not because someone forced Him to, but because He saw it as the ultimate act of love.
If the trolley problem had a twist where the person on the track saw the train coming and willingly stepped in to save the others, it would be a completely different moral story. That’s what makes Jesus’ sacrifice unique. It wasn’t a cold, calculated trade-off. It was love in action.
The Difference Between Love and a Math Problem
Philosophers debate whether sacrifice can ever be truly selfless. Is love just another version of utilitarian math—choosing what benefits the most people? If so, does that mean Jesus’ sacrifice was just another version of this moral equation?
The answer lies in what kind of sacrifice this was. If Jesus had been an unwilling pawn in a divine chess game, then yes, this would be nothing more than cosmic utilitarianism. But He wasn’t. He stepped forward, fully aware of the pain ahead, and embraced it not out of obligation, but out of love.
Love, at its core, isn’t about math. It isn’t about making cold calculations about what benefits the most people. Love is about stepping into someone else’s pain, willingly bearing their burden. It’s why a mother stays up all night with her sick child, even though she’ll suffer exhaustion. It’s why a soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades.
That kind of love isn’t about maximizing benefits—it’s about choosing to endure suffering so that someone else doesn’t have to.
Couldn’t God Have Just Forgiven Without the Cross?
Some might wonder, why did there need to be a sacrifice at all? If God is love, couldn’t He have just declared, “I forgive you,” and moved on?
But if we take a closer look at life, we realize that real forgiveness always costs something.
Imagine someone crashes into your car and totals it. If you demand they pay for the damage, justice is served. But if you forgive them, the cost doesn’t just disappear. Someone still has to absorb it. Either they pay, or you cover the loss yourself. Forgiveness isn’t about ignoring the cost—it’s about choosing to take it on yourself instead of making someone else suffer for it.
This is what Jesus’ sacrifice was. It wasn’t God needing blood to be satisfied. It was God saying, “I will take the cost myself. I will suffer so you don’t have to.”
Love That Steps Into the Suffering
The crucifixion wasn’t about God pulling a lever to sacrifice one for many. It was about God stepping onto the tracks Himself, saying, “Let it be me.”
It was the ultimate collision of justice and mercy. Justice demanded that sin had consequences. Mercy meant God took those consequences Himself. And love meant that He willingly endured suffering for the sake of those He loved.
This changes the whole framework of the trolley problem. The typical version forces us to ask: should we sacrifice one to save many? But the story of Jesus reframes the question: What if the one on the tracks chose to be there? What if love meant taking on suffering, not out of obligation, but because that’s what love does?
This is why Christianity isn’t just about sin and punishment—it’s about a God who doesn’t sit back and watch the world suffer. He enters into it. He faces the pain, the injustice, the heartbreak. He stands on the tracks when no one else can.
A Different Kind of Answer
The trolley problem forces us into a logical puzzle, but love doesn’t always fit into neat moral equations. Love isn’t about minimizing damage or maximizing gain. It’s about standing with the ones who suffer.
Jesus didn’t die because God pulled a lever. He died because He saw the train coming and chose to stand in the way. That’s not just a mathematical choice—it’s a love that rewrites the entire question.
And that love is what makes all the difference.
Image by Hannah
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