Crucifixion

[callistahogan]

As you can probably imagine, I had to do a post on this topic eventually.

As you all know--or all should know--yesterday is the day commonly associated with Jesus's resurrection, and last Friday the date commonly known as Good Friday, the day Jesus died on the cross for our sins. As such, there were apparently quite a few shows on the Bible and the events written in the Bible on the Discovery Channel last night, and I caught this show on the crucifixion.

And they were vicious.

There were apparently many ways of crucifixion during the Ancient Roman times, whether it was by the cross (which is the most universally-known form of crucifixion) or by simply running them through with a spear, sticking the spear in the ground and leaving them to die... in plain sight. The Ancient Romans were all about power and torture, and making themselves out to be the biggest bullies in the playground, to use a metaphor.

It was scary, seeing what they did. It seemed like crucifixion was purely made to prolong the process of death as long as possible, and that's exactly what it was for, according to the show I watched. It was absolutely scary, seeing them impale people through their stomachs, leaving them to bleed to death, and seeing men and even woman get scourged and then hung on a cross to die, nails driven into the hands and feet so that they could hardly even move. Not to mention the fact that they had to carry their cross beams to the crucifixion site which, more often that not, was more than a mile away from the city.

In my Christian point of view, the fact that Jesus had to go through this type of torture just makes it all the worse, not that it wasn't absolutely terrible before.

I mean, during one of the Jewish revolts in... 4 A.D., I believe, the Ancient Romans crucified over six thousand men and woman along the roads. One person is bad enough, three people is absolutely terrible, but six thousand? I don't understand why people would ever want to cause so much harm to another human being, I really don't. It's absolutely terrible.

I'm still reeling from what I saw, frankly. It was terribly bloodthirsty. I am glad that, for all intents and purposes, we've gotten out of that crucifixion stage, even though there are terrible ways to kill nowadays. I just can't believe that Jesus went through all that torture, and not because He did anything wrong, either--He was betrayed, and He died on the cross for our sins. He willingly went through all of that torture... for us. And I find it terrible that we don't recognize that sacrifice...

But I'll stop this post now, considering it's gotten fairly long winded. It just goes to show how much I can ramble on and on about a topic if it interests me enough, doesn't it?

Comments

[alexseanchai]

You do that, if you like. I'm pretty sure there's no answer, though.

[callistahogan.livejournal.com]

There is an answer, or as much as an answer as us humans can understand. I remember hearing something about this, but can't remember what they said.

And besides, we infinitesimally small humans can't even fathom the idea of a God, let alone understand why he allows certain things to happen. All I can do is give you what I think, and I can understand if you don't agree with me.

I Dare You To Believe

[ravyn-crescent.livejournal.com]

Well, not sure how much I have to add, but I feel I should add something. I'm set in my beliefs, but I go outside the Book to seek answers for things as well, haven't had the best life. Still, I don't believe it was God who is to blame for that, and if He is, I believe it to be a test. What happened to Jesus was horrible, especially horrible that God knew we would be so easily corrupted that we would need such a torture to equal our sins. If you really look at it that way, God gives us an amazing amount of leeway. You have to do something worse than a crucifixion in order to have no hope of being saved? Wow.

I believe God can see into the future, at least a bit. I mean... I have a hard time believing He can see the whole time line from start to finish, but I believe He can see a lot.

He would not be the first being/person to ever make a mistake, to ever have their dreams crushed, to ever have a situation not work out or to have someone ruin it. We have Satan to, you see. You cannot have good without evil, how else would you know what you had was good?

So... I think that's the answer. Humans were built in His image, right? So why can't we see Him acting... humanly? I'm fine with people saying “No” but I've yet to hear a good enough reason. To me, there is too much evil in the world, but to destroy that removes free will.

Anyway, thank you, callistahogan for posting this thought inspiring update.

Re: I Dare You To Believe

[alexseanchai]

The thing about God acting human is that that means he's limited in some way--he doesn't know the consequences of all his actions (which is the key one, here--if it's possible for him to make mistakes, then he can't exactly have known ahead of time that they'd be mistakes), or he doesn't have the power to do the actions he'd like to do, or he knows the negative consequences and could avert them but goes through with actions that have them anyway, or any combination of the above. Which makes it hard for the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God that many Christians believe in to exist.

Also, hi.