April 15, 2009
Wittiness has become something of a
virtue in our day. Wit combines cleverness and humor to offer amusing
insights. Though entertaining and often insightful, sometimes wittiness
enters the realm of the ridiculous which could also be amusing, yet
essentially pointless.
An example of such ridiculousness can be found in the April 10th edition of The Huffington Post in an article titled "Killing Jesus For Today's Market"
by Spencer Green. The article is based upon the popular quote
attributed to H.G. Wells that basically states: "If Jesus Christ had
been hanged, the symbol of Christianity would be a noose." The author
tries to make the point, albeit in a humorous way, that the cross of
Christ has become too commercialized in our day and has become a symbol
that may be powerful yet is unrelateable to the contemporary age. He
then proceeds to give alternate tools of suffering and death Christ
could have gone through to make the story more attune to twenty-first
century ears. In doing so, he proposes alternative symbols for
Christians that would make the story more relateable, such as the hammer
and nails instead of the crucifix itself. Green further elaborates the
hypothesis of H.G. Wells with a bunch of "what if's".
For example, what
if Christ had been hanged by a noose? "Would Christians today wear
little nooses around their necks?" Green asks. Or if he was killed by a
firing squad, would we wear little guns. After being creative with a
bunch of death scenarios that could have been used for Christ, such as
tying him to a boulder and pushing him off a mountain, or being kicked
in the balls by Roman guards in a cage fight and other such tortures
involving the penis, or tearing him to pieces in the arena which would
make for a "kick-ass resurrection", the author then asks what symbol
would Christians use if Jesus never died at all. His answer: not much,
which means Jesus would get depressed, drunk and probably hang himself.
After reading this article which
aimed at being witty, I just thought it was ridiculous and pointless. I
can't say I was offended, because such sarcasm about Christianity has
become common in today's media, and as Oscar Wilde said: "Sarcasm is the
lowest form of wit". In other words, it's nothing new under the sun,
nut just told a different way. And with the rise of atheism, such boring
and dark sarcasm has become a staple of entertainment and comedy in our
day.
Take for example two of the best
and most influential comedians of the twentieth century, Lenny Bruce
and Bill Hicks, who also elaborated on the line of H.G. Wells. Lenny
Bruce joked: "If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school
children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks
instead of crosses". And Bill Hicks said: "Do you think wearing a cross
is really a good way to make Jesus happy? Maybe that's why he hasn't
returned yet. 'Once the fish comes back in I'm there'. Kinda insensitive
really. Like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant and saying
'just thinking of John, Jackie,... we loved him'."
Now when I hear all these jokes
which try to make the Christians devotion to the cross seem ridiculous, I
wonder who really is ridiculous? Granted, if one doesn't understand the
significance of the cross for Christians and is not a Christian himself
I can see the ridiculousness of it, but it doesn't make the joke itself
any less ridiculous because it is pointless and only shows the
ignorance of the one trying to be funny instead of his cleverness. I
will also grant the fact that many crosses, especially in the Western
art, are repulsive and scary, but this only merits a joke about its repulsiveness or scariness, which in turn could also merit the title of being witty.
One could even examine the same type of joke in the Monty Python comedy, Life Of Brian,
in the scene where Brian is running away from a bunch of self-deceived
hysterics who believe him to be the Messiah, and as he runs away he
loses a sandal which they begin treating like a relic or cross in an
over-exagerated way.
In all these instances, we are not
merely presented with irony to evoke petty laughter. Rather, I believe
it goes back to a proverbial truth known for centuries and first
articulated by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales (c. 1387): "A man may seye full sooth [truth] in game and pley"; then by William Shakespeare in King Lear (1605): "Jesters do oft prove prophets"; and also by the more well-known version from Roxburghe Ballad
(c.1665): "Many a true word hath been spoken in jest". Oscar Wilde
gives the most modern rendering: "If you want to tell people the truth,
make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." In other words, some
truths, too painful or too likely to provoke, can be spoken only when
the listener has been disarmed by laughter. In all these sayings
laughter is the means to an end, the end being truth. However, just
because we laugh at an apparent truth does not mean it is
the truth. And what all these comedians are doing is leading the cynics
in their audience to the illusion of an apparent truth by means of
laughter to appear clever.
I understand that sometimes we
have an urge to laugh at something funny and not think too hard about
it. In so doing we make the truth (or apparent truth) as the means to an
end, the end being laughter. But this is how entertainment distorts our
sense of what we normally classify as sacred and holy. And for
Christians, this is exactly what the cross is for us. The cross is
Christianity's most sacred and holy symbol and we should be watchful and
diligent lest it becomes anything less. Since the cynics are trying to
instill truths through laughter, it is necessary to examine how true the
claim may be that if Jesus had been hung by a noose instead of
crucified, would the symbol of Christianity really be a noose instead of
a cross?
This question (or remark) evokes
similar questions once addressed to Scholastic theologians by fellow
Scholastics of the Middle Ages and Humanists of the Renaissance. One
question was: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" Another
is: "Can God create a stone so big that he cannot move it?" Both of
these questions have been answered ad nauseum, but what it
basically comes down to is that the questions make logical fallacies,
thus making them self-refuting. The same is true with the question: "If
Jesus died by hanging, would the noose become the new Christian symbol?"
Among logical fallacies this is called a "Hypothesis Contrary To Fact"
where you argue from something that might have happened, but didn't. And
that is the whole point - Jesus did not die by any other means but by
crucifixion, no matter how outdated and unrelateable this fact is to
contemporary ears.
To answer the question more
objectively and seriously so even the cynics can understand, I would say
that Jesus died on the cross because he had to die on the cross.
It was God's will that he died specifically on the cross. If Jesus did
not die on the cross and instead died any other death, then he would
have died as a charlatan and a false messiah. Therefore, the assumption
that Jesus even could have possibly died another death except by
crucifixion is a false assumption, irrelevant and even impossible.
To a non-Christian this may all
sound absurd, until the evidence is examined as to why Jesus indeed had
to die by crucifixion in order for his claims as to his person to be
taken as true. The evidence comes from the Old Testament. In the Old
Testament we see many times the cross being prefigured as the instrument
through which death would be destroyed and demons vanquished, which is
exactly what Christians believe about the cross.
In Genesis 3 we are told about
the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. By the
latter came the curse of death through the devil. The Tree of Life
becomes the cross of Christ through which we enter into God's glory. We
see this typified in the crucifixion of Jesus where one man crucified
next to him ridicules Jesus and dies (Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil) while the other man hanging on the cross accepts Jesus and enters
into eternal life because he partook of the Tree of Life. Thus, as the
Apostle Paul says, by one tree came death and by another tree (the
cross) came eternal life.
There are many other places
throughout the Old Testament where specifically the cross is revealed to
be a source of life and a source of the power and salvation of God. We
see this in Exodus 15:29 where the bitter waters of Marah turn sweet
after Moses throws a tree by God's command in the water. In Exodus
17:8-13 we witness the Israelites defeat the Amalekites by the power of
God which worked through the wooden rod of Moses that he was commanded
to hold up with his arms in the form of a cross. In Leviticus 9:22 Aaron
brings forgiveness of sins and peace to the people by lifting his arms
in the form of a cross. In Numbers 2 we read how the camp of the
Israelites were to be divided by tribes around the Tabernacle in the
exact position of a cross, and this prevented Balaam the Prophet from
cursing Israel when he looked at their formation from the mountain and
blessed them saying: "How shall I call down a curse upon whom God did
not curse? For from the top of the mountains I see him, and from the
hills I envision him" (Number 23:8, 9).
When we read in the Book of
Judges that Sampson was tied to two pillars in the form of a cross, and
how through this position his strength returned to him and he destroyed
his enemies, we are reminded of the power of the cross. Also in Ezekiel
9:4 God sends an angel to mark the foreheads of all his people before
the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem; the literal translation says to
"mark a tau" which is the letter "T" which is in the shape of the
cross. And there are other such stories in the Old Testament in which
the cross is a source of life, a source of power and a source of
salvation and protection.
There are also a few prophecies
which foretell the cross as being a source of salvation for Israel.
Psalm 22, quoted by Jesus on the cross, foretells the death of the
Messiah which can only best be described as a crucifixion. This is
especially evident in verses 17-19: "For many dogs surround me, an
assembly of evildoers enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I
numbered all my bones. And they look and stare at me. They divided my
garments among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots." In
Deuteronomy 21:23 God commands that all those who are put to death on a
tree should not hang there overnight, and he curses all those who hang
on a tree to die. The Apostle Paul explains in Galatians 2 that God did
this to show by what sort of death the Messiah was to die.
To conclude, what we get from
all this is that if Jesus was to die the death of the Messiah of Israel,
then his only choice was to die by crucifixion, which was clearly
foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament. There was no other option for
the legitimate Messiah, and there is no other option for his followers
but to look to the cross as the source of life, the source of power and
the source of salvation for all mankind. And it should not surprise us
that the world ridicules the cross. This was done in apostolic times as
well, as St. Paul writes: "We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a
stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to all those who are
called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom
of God" (1 Corinthians 23, 24).
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