God Died

The Crucifixion, by myself. March 2020

Acrylic and gold leaf on a handcross

God died. Every time I think about that fact something catches in my throat. And I find myself sitting, wondering about that.

I should think about it more often.

One of the things that has always stuck out at me about the world is how brutal and uncaring a place it is. I'm typing this on a computer manufactured in China, a place known for its oppression and evil. This computer runs because someone who is a slave for all intents and purposes helped put it together. Running the servers required to be able to type my post hurts the environment that I live in. I live in the USA, which is essentially policing the world because we've created such an awful network of global economic ties that we can't afford not to, not without risking our own economy. Our country routinely butchers its young because we can't control ourselves and the best most of us seem to have as an excuse is to deny the personhood of said little individuals, using the flimsiest of cowardly arguments to try and not face such a horrific thing.

And yes, if you are pro-choice and reading this blog, I am talking about you.

Yes, you.

Suck it up. I know you're a coward. At best. At worst you're advocating genocide, actively. I find that monstrous. And disgusting. Yeah, go cry. Or be angry. You're alive and capable of doing it, which I can't say for the hundreds of thousands of children you're OK with butchering by dismemberment and burns. At least give them a frickin' burial, as opposed to throwing them into trashcans.  At least blacks got to claim to be 3/5s of a person legally! Even if that is a moral evil that is so horrifying I can barely comprehend it!

Yes, you are morally worse than the 3/5's rule. By a very long shot.

In case it is still not clear, yes you, a thousand times you.

OK, that's out of the way.

Let's see if anyone else is still reading this Great and Holy Friday post.

For the rest of you who are either disgusted but reading on anyway or nodding your head in assent or whatever, it doesn't get much better in the U.S. The simple fact of the matter is that the Republican party ain't Christian, not by a long shot. The Old Testament may have its faults in the modern liberal's eyes, but they shouldn't take issue with the laws about taking care of the poor and the alien, the folks who don't fit in whatever system a society has. Care for the poor is not a private affair, period. So claiming that supporting the Republican or the libertarian party is supporting life or is Christian is a laughingstock, because it is our civic and political duty to support those not as well off as us, regardless of how deserving you think they are. In fact, to care for the undeserving is at the height of Christian charity! So all those deaths, spiritual and physical? Yeah, that's on the Republicans and those who vote for them. It's longer, slower, and not quite as graphic as the liberal genocide (what era of liberalism, classical or modern, hasn't had large scale genocide?? Really?), but it is just as deadly.

Yes, I am talking to you. That person who voted for Trump simply because he stated he was pro-life.

Yes, you.

My indignation is not as strong, but it should be. That's on me. But you backing those charlatans? Yeah, look in the mirror to see who's responsible for that.

And don't get me started on the military, which focuses on ruining souls so that they may become killing machines. I've never been part of a system that so wrecks a human soul so quickly, so efficiently. It is possible to train people to kill without wrecking their soul. But we ain't doing it.

Our system is built upon oppression and death, worldwide. As a race we are a miserable, unfeeling, unloving pile of filth.  To deny it is to engage in sheer fantasy, of the variety that is unhealthy to indulge in, and yet far too easy. We look the other way so that we can get ours. I look the other way so I can get mine.

And what was the Christian God's response to this dog eat dog world that we willingly set up? He let it crush Him. After three years of doing nothing but good, so much that the Gospel of John says that all the books in the world could not contain His acts of goodness, He let the inevitable happen to Him. Let it. He let us kill Him.

He walked into a deathtrap and suffocated to death in a manner I would not wish upon my worst enemy.

So the next time you start talking about systemic change for the benefit of mankind remember what God's solution to this mess was: to be crushed by the existing system. And to keep on loving, at all times. To keep seeing the good in the oppressor, to refuse to let that define your view of them, to acknowledge that goodness and love transcend this broken and awful world, to refuse to be corrupted by your pain, because Love will win. It is as inevitable as the creation of the Grand Canyon. But the water in the Grand Canyon did not care to become a rock, to dig forcibly against said rock it encountered. Rocks chip away. They fall apart. The water knew better. It stayed water. And won.

The side of Christ gushed water. And blood. My soul is very much so a rocky, hard, unfeeling, ugly, unloving thing. I wish I could say that I will be won over to Him in a day, a week, a month, two months, decades, but the Grand Canyon took thousands, millions possibly, of years to form! And it wasn't actively resisting the process, unlike myself.  And make no mistake, I do. By the second. Hatred feels strong. Isolation feels so empowering, even if it leaves me a miserable wreck of a specimen. So who knows if I will be able to soften my heart at all? Certainly not I, but I hope so, as best I can. The best I can do is to keep letting the Blood and the Water wash over me. To weep from the agony of having to let go of the pain and the horrors perpetrated by and to me and the world, to see the face of the One Who is with me all the way down this elevator to Hell. To scream at the One Who is very patiently and lovingly holding me as the poison is drawn out of my body and soul.

And then to gasp in relief as I see the beaming face of my wife. And my children. And my friends. And my family. And to realize that I am not alone in this fight for my soul, for our soul. I may be a miserable wreck of a human being, but Christ has given me people to sit beside me as I am held, kicking and screaming and cursing at the One Who is drawing out the poison, because of the immensity of the pain. They are there to help me realize that the One Who does this is not a torturer, but a healer. And that sometimes the difference between the two is merely intent, if nothing else. I cannot focus on the Face of the One Who sacrificed Himself for me because of the sheer pain and rage, and so therefore I have been my given my family and friends to try and help me focus.

Because this only ends one way.

Only one.

There's only one way out of this mess. 

And I need to focus so that way I can greet it with open arms.

It may be a week. A month. Two decades. Two seconds. But it is coming. There are some days I look at that with a joy that I cannot begin to express. To see the flaming wreckage collapse! To see it rot and fall away! Oh what a day! To see my part in this hellish facade melt away, what a blessing that will be. Death is not the problem, not anymore, but the solution. I only hope that, when that day comes and I finally get to go Home, to finally be in a place where this cycle of misery is no longer a thing, that I truly rejoice that I have left the insanity behind. That I will wipe my neighbor's eyes, not continue to hit them because I'm scared about what will happen when we stop. That I will comfort and heal without fear of reprisal. Because I'm a coward for even thinking that as a possibility. I hope to transcend that fear.

I hope we all do.

Christ did not stop the clock. The definition of compassion is to suffer evil in the other. Christ did this. Willingly.

I hope I have half His courage.

Y'know, before it's too late.

Because some day it will be.