Comments

  1. Mark says

    I always wondered what it would be like if they had killed Jesus by some other ghastly means like, oh, say a guillotine. Wouldn’t it be just as gruesome if all the Xians were walking around with fashion jewelry glorifying guillotines?

  2. Mystic Olly says

    I think Bill Hicks did the first JC-coming-back-and-seeing-a-bunch-of-crucifixes-joke.

    I believe he said, “That’s kinda like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant and saying,”Just thinkin’ of John, jus’ thinkin’ of John”.”.

    Mystic (oh so very Mystic) Oli

  3. ferfuracious says

    “You’ll be going round calling the wife a prossie and a slattern next.”

    Haha

  4. Kseniya says

    Right! As Lenny Bruch famously suggested, if He’d lived in the 20th century, Catholic girls would be wearing little electic chairs on gold chains. What if He’d been stoned to death? Or torn apart by wild dogs? Or dismembered by a giant squid? Or trampled by a herd of stampeding triceratops? (One wonders why it took a frozen waterfall, rather than, say, a fossilized ceratopsian skull or the universal symbol of pawn-broking, to inspire Francis Collins to surrender himself to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I admit a three-pronged frozen waterfall is unusual, but…)

    I LOLed at: “You’ll be going round calling the wife a prossie and a slattern next.”

  6. says

    Christians like Mel Gibson play up Jesus’ allegedly horrific ordeal at the hands of the Romans. Jesus had it easy compared with all the people experiencing the physical trauma going on in Iraq every day. A scourged back, nails through the extremities and even a spear wound in the side seem mild compared with getting your limbs and face blown off by a car bomb.

  7. says

    Traditional christian fashions? Look no further than what the Holy Hotties wear at JC’s Girls. Go to: http://www.jcsgirls.com/
    Click on the link for Holyhottie Wear. I particularly like the tight pants with Holy Hottie emblazoned across the ass.

  8. Kseniya says

    “Prossie And A Slattern would be an excellent band name”

    LOL yes, or the title of one of those delightfully obscure BBC dramedies.

    Jesus had it easy compared with …

    Wow. I’m having an epiphany of sorts.

    I think it was PZ who blogged a few days ago that the great “sacrifice” Jesus made (a day of torturous death followed by an eternity sitting at the right hand of God in Heaven) on our behalf isn’t really all that impressive when compared to something like Him suffering in Hell for all time so that We don’t have to.

    Jesus died for our sins. Ok, that was nice of him, but everybody dies. He died horribly, yes, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody – but not as horribly as some, and his suffering was relatively short.

    Jesus had it easy compared with…

    What a list we could make!

    1) The hundreds or thousands of direct and indirect victims of Torquemada.

    2) Virtually anyone who’s ever had cancer or any equivalently long-term, painful, debilitating disease or condition (all of which God, in His Infinite Wisdom, has bequeathed unto us).

    3) Virtually anyone who’s ever had to bury one or more of his or her own children.

    4) Virtually anyone ever born with a serious birth defect.

    5) Burn victims.

    Etc. Etc. Etc.

    I can’t get the phrase “What’s the big deal?!” out of my head. I never thought about it this way before. (Hey, I’m new at this…)

  9. windy says

    Jesus had it easy compared with…

    Spartacus! At least Jebus didn’t have 6000 disciples that were killed horribly on the same occasion.

    Sometimes I can’t imagine how Jesus’s suffering could have made any impression to most people in the past. Shouldn’t they just go “SFW? I saw the guy down the street get crucified/burned alive/impaled/whatever, and that didn’t seem very uplifting.”

  10. Mark says

    1) The hundreds or thousands of direct and indirect victims of Torquemada.

    “Let’s face it…you can’t torquemada anythying!!”

    Sorry…History of the World Part I was just on TV yesterday and that line always cracked me up.

  11. Ali says

    Yea verily, I LOL’d too.

    Thanks for the link to the duck, I’d never seen his site before.

  12. David Harmon says

    I always wondered what it would be like if they had killed Jesus by some other ghastly means

    We might well be using the cross anyway — I seem to recall it was used by the cult of Mithras, arguably the first pagan faith absorbed by Christianity. It’s also a classic fire/sun symbol, and mythologically, Jesus (like Mithras) is a Sun Child.

  13. IanR says

    David Harmon is right – if you read the Gospels, one of the most important points is that Jesus died alone. His disciples ran away, none of them were there to see it. Paul, who was the first to write about it, said nothing about his death except that it happened. Jesus probably was crucified, since that was the standard means of execution, but the entire Passion story is nothing but a literary device.