You know, I sometimes wonder about people who call themselves Christians. Seriously. An artist takes the time to render an image of Christ crucified, and Bill Donohue, he of the Catholic League, is all up in arms . . . because Jesus is naked and made of chocolate!
I first saw something about it at my friend Park Life's blog, who wondered if Jesus was hollow and contained a prize. I said, in comments, that the prize was a complete, folded set of death wraps. Atrios asked whether a penis-less Jesus would have been better, although that would have completely undermined the whole idea that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. Duncan linked to this post at Feministe which highlight the "outrage" of Donohue and his followers, who, among other things, threatened the lives of the employees at the hotel where the piece was to be displayed. One of them quit.
Park Life brought up Andres Serrano's infamous photo "Piss Christ", where the photographer snapped a shot of a crucifix in a glass of his own urine. There was much ado about that fifteen or so years ago, and this is equally overdone. Seriously, who in the world could possibly be offended by this rather cheesy (chocolaty?) rendering of the suffering Christ? Mindless anti-Semites among others, it would appear.
More to the point, it brings up an issue that is being addressed, one directly addressed to this blog and its author - the question of "swearing", a subset, one supposes of a much larger question of blasphemy (ironically enough, in 1992 or so, a book with that title was published, and Serrano's photo was the cover art, giving it much wider exposure than it might otherwise have had). I think it only fair to give my thoughts on this question since it has come up twice within the past twenty-four hours. My own view, expressed in a comment on another blog, is simple - I do not believe that there is any utterance I or anyone else can or will ever make that can separate us from divine grace. With all the horrors of this world perpetrated by human beings, to even consider God removing one of us from the divine presence because of a bad word is monstrous. Just consider this - I could use profanity from now until the day I die, and nothing but profanity, and it would never equal the horrors visited upon child soldiers in Africa, recruited in Liberia and Sierra Leone, often to protect diamond smuggling, and very often forced to kill close friends or family members or face death themselves. I could "blaspheme the Holy Spirit" (the one "unforgivable sin" according to the Gospel of St. Matthew, although it is never defined, and is best forgotten)from now until doomsday and it would never be as horrific as a day in Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Occupied Poland, Mao's China, or Pol Pot's Kampuchea. Should God turn out to be the kind of God who would, in fact, terminate a relationship with me because I say a bad word on occasion, then I would rather not have anything to do with that God.
The same thing goes for "My Sweet Lord", "Piss Christ", "The Satanic Bible", and Mel Tillis records, all those things that are offensive to eye and ear. We may not like them (I for one think Serrano's photo childish), but to consider them an offense against Christian believers and the Christian faith is not just ludicrous, it is as childish as Serrano's photographic rant. How could anyone take offense at this?
With all the horrors of this world, one would think Donohue would have better things to do.
