On my way home from work, I usually pass by a big statue of Jesus. It's outside a church, so it's understandable. Of course, being a Christian symbol, it's not a statue of him standing proud and strong. It's not of him healing the sick, or walking on water, or feeding the hungry. Oh no. Instead it's that delightful image of his execution that all the youngsters find so trendy, wearing around their necks and such.
I don't know about you, but it gives my a deep spiritual joy, and a spring in my step, to walk past the effigy or a tortured man every day. No wonder the Church is going from strength to strength, what with such uplifting imagery. It's odd that no other major organisations have followed the same template - every McDonalds could have Ronald McDonald in the electric chair, Barnados could have papier mache children outside being abused, every branch of Zavvi can have a burning replica of Richard Branson waving you into the store.
It's handy that the symbol of Christianity is also the symbol of everything that's wrong with it.
Hey, you know Jesus? He taught us about love and forgiveness and everything, yeah? Well, we think the most important thing he did was being nailed to some wood, and dying slowly. Let's remember that instead. All that affection and respect for your fellow man - that's not important. We want the first thing to spring to peoples minds when they think of Jesus to be: 'oww!'.
So anyway, on Friday I was walking home, and there were a group of teenagers (who seemed to be tourists) messing around by the statue. They were joking around, and even took a picture of one of the group standing in front of Jesus with their arms outstretched. As an atheist, I couldn't decide if it was disrespectful or not. it probably was, but I'm more offended by the statue than the idiots laughing at it.
You'd think, wherever the tourists were from, Jesus is still quite familiar. I'm sure there are similar statues in their home country to laugh at. Maybe it's actually a deeply respectful tradition to mock the Messiah where they come from. Maybe they also do caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad as George Michael, and piss on Buddha.
It's probably more classy than ignoring the teachings of your spiritual figure and constantly throwing his grisly death in your face (not to mention eating his corpse on a weekly basis).
It's quite depressing that a lot of religious leaders see guilt as a more effective motivational tool than hope and morality. They're probably right, but it's still annoying.
So in the end, I went up to the tourist teenagers and, remembering the teachings of the Catholic church, I flayed them for a little bit, then nailed them up on lampposts until they died.
What Would Jesus Do? Suffer.
Suffer loads, apparently.
