Purpledawn,
Just to throw in some historical info for you:
I spent about five years reading repeatedly through the writings of the 2nd century church, from the close of the NT period to the early 3rd century. One of the more interesting, and difficult, things to read about was their view on the atonement. I was never able to wrap their views together into a simple theology.
However, a few things were clear.
1. They often quote that verse in Jer 7 that you quoted earlier, saying that God never told the fathers in the wilderness to sacrifice to him. Across the board, the early church argued that the sacrifices were for the Jews, to give them something to see, not for God.
2. Their favorite argument for that perspective seemed to be Psalm 51, where David says that God did not desire sacrifices or burnt offerings, but instead wanted a broken and contrite spirit.
3. Since Psalm 51 ends with David sacrificing
after he was forgiven (not before), they argued that a sacrifice did not purify the offerer, but the offerer's heart purified the sacrifice.
4. An example of this can be seen in Cain and Abel. Almost universally, Christians today say that God rejected Cain's bloodless sacrifice of grain, while accepting Abel's sacrifice of a lamb, because it included blood. That viewpoint was unknown to the early church. They believed that Abel's pure heart made his sacrifice acceptable, while Cain's evil heart made his unacceptable. They explained that this is simply what is written, because God said to Cain, "If you do good, will you not be accepted?" To them, this was God telling Cain how to have his sacrifice accepted; by doing good, not by adding blood.
I tell you all this just to let you know that at one time your view was simply the mainline view. The "God requires a death" doctrine is really only a Western view, even in modern times. I am not positive, but I believe that most Orthodox (Eastern, Russian, Greek, Coptic) believers would call the atonement/sacrifice view of the Catholics and Protestants a very Roman legalistic sort of view, unknown to the eastern world, which was never under the rule of Roman law. I've read several historians that attribute the "God requires a death" doctrine to St. Anselm and date it to around the 11th century, which would be why the Orthodox never adopted it. It was taught after the "Great Split."
Just a bit of info for you.