With Passion Week and Easter at hand, millions of Christians of all stripes will hear once again the myth-ridden story of Jesus of Nazareth and his death in whom and in which, it is said, those interested in eternal life for themselves must believe.

The theology is that human beings were born in sin and must have that sin forgiven along with all the singular sins great and small that have sprung from it. According to the one called St. Paul, "The wages of sin is death,"* meaning that a death must occur to efface said sin and so spare the life of sinners. Thus the second clause of that passage: "But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," or as the signs at who- knows-how-many thousands of evangelical churches proclaim: JESUS DIED FOR OUR SINS.

The theologians call it "the blood atonement," which goes right along with the eye-for-an-eye theory -- both barbaric ideas whose time has long run out at least in that small part of the world in which reason rules.

Atonement in its secular sense is usually thought of as compensation for trespass against an individual. Indeed, reconciliation by way of atonement with those whom one has hurt is necessary because one-on-one antagonisms can turn an entire community sour.

How, though, should a community itself atone and for what? One does not have to look far to see that for which society could atone: Income disparity made worse by malign partisan politics added to a sometimes willed ignorance or, worse, disregard on the part of haves of what the have-nots must endure; the despoiling of the environment; the profligate consumption and the throwaway culture that aids and abets it.

Atonement for such wrongs cannot be made in the form of a general confession, or, for that matter, in the familiar sacrament of penance. Words and intentions will not suffice, meaning that a community whose members acknowledge the reality of societal trespass upon the dignity of the economically and socially defenseless as well as upon the fabric of Earth herself must mobilize for action in a world-aware manner.

The Hail Marys and Our Fathers of the past, mumbled for absolution on the cheap after three minutes in the confessional, or fasting on Yom Kippur or during Ramadan, will have to be replaced with learning about what an intentional community can and should do to alleviate the indignities of social neglect and oppression and to remediate the damage human beings have done to the environment.

Such initiative, if pursued with purpose and integrity, will inevitably entail sacrifice. The goal of such sacrifice, however, is not the atoner's eventual resurrection to eternal life or anything like that. It is about setting things to right here and now for those living and those who are yet to live.

The animation of dead tissue is long since the purview of such fantasy writers as Mary Wollstonencraft Shelley. The idea of spiritual resurrection is less creepy but as fantastical nevertheless. Both partake in the human desire to believe death isn't the end but that immortality is somehow in the cards.

Despite the incredible contentions of such books as "Heaven Is For Real," the real reality is that death is death and what of immortality we may reasonably desire will rest in the memory of our survivors -- and, for the more prominent, in the history books.

When I passed my 75th birthday a couple of months ago, I began to wonder how I would be remembered by those who have risked their own reputation and sanity to love me.

I want to have given my children and grandchildren reason to think that this particular father and grandfather did and said and wrote such things as may be deemed useful, humane, wise and enduring in attempts to set right what my generation and those before mine did wrong or, out of negligence or cowardice, allowed to happen.

Of course, I will know nothing of how my kids and their kids will think of me when I am gone. But should I have bequeathed them memories of a man who was part of the solution rather than of the problem, that will be resurrection enough.

*Epistle to the Romans, 6:23