The Crucifix, Inspiring Revulsion

THE CRUCIFIX PICTURED in the Facebook post was a stunning piece of art. Made of gold or silver gold, the materials alone must have cost a fortune. Both wooden beams turned into gold had a gently curving shape, alluringly. The slender, tortured body there-upon was shaped painfully realistically. It seemed too large and heavy to be worn on a chain about the neck, but was evidently a display piece. It was presented on Facebook to inspire faith, or display artistic craftmanship, or both, but could also be otherwise interpreted: as grotesque. Since my childhood, representations of the crucifixion have repelled, not inspired nor motivated any religious faith in me. I learned that the Romans stole this method of slow tortorous death from the Carthaginians, with whom they fought three wars, the Punic Wars, in the first and second centuries B.C., made famous by Hannibal's elephants crossing the Pyrenees in the snow. Such good imitators and learners were the ancient Romans that they began to so torture thousands of conquered captured enemies at a time, lining the Appian Way highway into Rome with thousands of the vanquished nailed to wooden crosses. A vulture's holiday. For this reason, and because of Pontius Pilate, the Romans generally come out on top in the never ending theologocal opinion poll: who killed Christ, the Jews, or the Romans? The Romans had the final authority, and thus, the ultimate responsibility. I am still trying to discern what part Christ played in anyone's salvation. If he died for my sins, the price has been payed twice, once already by my experiencing the consequences of my actions. If salvation through Christ keeps humans out of hell, which is a hideous manifestation of the human imagination, then God could do it with a wave of his or her holy hand, sparing the need for a gruesome sacrificial theatrical spectacle. The problem of human suffering is given by Bart Ehrman, the world's leading authority on early Christian history and Chairman of the UNC Chapel Hill Dept. of Religious Studies as the reason why he began his doctoral studies at Princetion as an evangelical Chrstian, then become agnostic. Why does an omnipotent God allow human suffering? The ideal of "free choice", a dubious concept at best in a universe controlled by natural law, is inadequate to Ehrman, and to anyone aware that natural law does not stop at the human cranium. In the ancient world, all over the world, people decided that the world was operated by all owerful anthropomorphic beings living atop mountains in the sky. In the western hemisphere virgins and children were hacked or burned to death atop funeral pyres of religious devotion. Then came the Jews, the Romans, the sacrificial cross, and "civilization's" spiteful defiant veneration of the crucifix. Goethe said: "The Christian religion began as a political uprising against Roman power, and when that failed, it turned moralistic." The moral uprising, promising salvation in heaven if not here, was a disappointment to those seeking a warrior messiah for deliverance from Roman cruelty. Thus, they invented their own cultish form of cruelty.