The thing about Jesus is that he’s billed as the savior
of all mankind because he died on a cross
as if it were some ultimately painful death in sacrifice for our sins
but let’s be honest
being crucified as far as punishments go isn’t really that bad
like for sure it sucks but
there are much more memorable ways to suffer
like Prometheus of another mythology
chained to a mountain and every single day
an eagle comes and tears out his organs with its beak
and it has been happening for thousands of years
and it happened today and yesterday and all throughout the 80s
and will happen tomorrow and the day after and so on forever.
In fact
to hype up Jesus’s measly crucifixion from town to town in every land
is merely unimaginative in that ancient empire
and his suffering only lasted several hours
which as far as historical crucifixions go
is not much to create a Christ around
ahead of most condemned Roman victims
hanging from their nails for days parching in the hot sun.
Beyond wood beams humans have invented much worse
like cooking each other in bronze bulls
where the metal burns add insult to injury
as your screams make music from a built-in horn
so your death entertains your torturers
as they sip their digestifs in the king’s banquet hall.
Being strangled is a crazy way to go out
maybe it’s shorter but talk about an aggressive way
for Jesus to die rolling on the ground being strangled
by Judas for ten amateur minutes until Jesus passes out
and maybe gets his face and skull stomped on.
Or being drawn and quartered torn to pieces for royal offense
which wasn’t a very cheek-turning thing for medieval Christians to do.
Or wasting away through months of Auschwitz medical torture
losing his mind starving on wooden planks
with a bucket of bad water and black bread to accompany
his lice and typhus until he wastes away and is tossed into a furnace.
Or being chased through swampy woods for a week by dogs
and beat and lynched for talking to a white woman.
Or drafting into a pointless and unwinnable war in a country
whose independence his occupation efforts are betraying.
Or growing pale and weak denied health insurance claims
thanks to a preexisting condition and maxed out lifetime care
with no miracles from pharma executives browsing yacht magazines.
Or getting captured and detained for years
as a desert sex slave and beheaded on live television.
Or being chopped into pieces by a fossil fuel dictator
and shrugged off and forgotten by arms dealers.
What if Jesus had died of starvation
slowly on a cold street in a town whose charitable impulses
got banned by civic laws criminalizing charity?
I guess I don’t know what I’m trying to get at
but perhaps we fetishize the suffering of our prophets
to ignore the suffering of the living.
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I am a Black Agnostic. There is a story, but conquerors don't appreciate or respect historical facts. Christianity was created, memorialized and altered to enrich and empower the greedy.
The Ethiopian East African Bible — is older than the King James Version (KJV). It was written in Ge'ez, which is an ancient language that is no longer spoken in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Bible is almost 800 years older than the KJV, completed in 1611.
https://twitter.com/KeneAkers/status/1764469786975854962?t=BOqtgZ8PygYV9xk5lUODQQ&s=19