Regardless of whether you think of him as God, man or myth (or all three) it is quite hard to deny the fact that the chief symbol of Christianity is that of a political radical who was brutally tortured to death by the state because he opposed the the political and philosophical leadership of the regime he lived under.
A Thought Experiment;
Imagine a stranger walking into a Christian church for the first time, someone who has never had any experience of the religion in their entire lives. You are with them as they walk through the door, and you are both confronted by the life size imagine of a human man bleeding and brutally tortured on the cross.
Your friend is, not surprisingly, shocked because they have seen never seen such brutal and uncompromising imagry in any of the worlds other religions, and they ask you what the story is. Now be honest, do you tell them the story of the actual events as written in the gospels, or do you tell them the layers of Church interpretation that was built up during the formation of Church dogma? Is your first instinct to describe how a man who was opposed to the political and religious rules of his society entered the colonial capital to much fanfare and – after trashing a commercial market being held in a temple – was eventually betrayed to the military police – told his armed comrades to stand down, and was brutally executed after a short show trial? Or do you dive straight into the theological interpretations and abstracts that surround the spiritual message of the crucifixion? Which explanation do you think would make the most sense of the gruesome image for our guest?
On the one hand Western Christianity is in crisis, and the debate as to why has been raging for decades. On the other we have a religion that exists in a deeply unjust, divided and authoritarian world of gross inequality – where the majority of the worlds population live in abject poverty – and where the primary symbol of that religion is that of a political and spiritual dissident being tortured to death, but the religion refuses to discuss it in those terms. I am not even saying that this is the whole story but is it not at least a very important part of the story?
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t see this as a battle between the physical and the spiritual interpretations. But one cannot exist without the other, and we do indeed live in a world where people who speak out against the powers that be have an unfortunate tendency to be brutally tortured to death. And this is the symbol at the soul and centre of Christianity that the religion refuses to take full ownership of. Until that glaring contradiction is addressed, our visiting friend will remain confused and the crisis will continue.
Sometimes it feels like Christianity rallies people with half of a battle cry and then suppresses the other half;
– “Help the poor, the weak and the vulnerable”
– “We will! And shall we challenge the structures that created this situation in the first place just like the central figure of the faith who was brutally tortured to death for doing so?”
– “oh, erm. No, we just mop up the mess,”
And the crisis continues……
Stephen Collings
