Last night I watched HBO’s Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi, a film exploring the Evangelical movement in America. I am unsure which is more shocking, Faces of Death or Friends of God.
Living in America it is hard not to notice the visibility of the Crucifix – from roadsides to political campaigns, Christianity is everywhere, but this film was not about Christianity, it was about Evangelicals. In the film, Evangelicals have every sort of activity and ministry to chat up Jesus and disparage liberals and scientists. The one group that seemed to most out place was the Christian Wrestling Federation, yes, “wrasslin for Jesus.” The Founder of the CWF spoke of all his aches and pains – how he visited the chiropractor all the time for back pain yet it was all worth it because Jesus suffered on the cross, more than anyone.
Then I lost it.
I began to tally up the suffering of the Biblical Jesus Christ and then compared it to what some of our soldiers go through. Although I don’t recall any solider suffering head injuries due to a crown of thorns, but I recall several who have had their faces burned off, limbs blown to bits and many many thousands that will endure years of painful physical therapy.
And those are the ones that lived.
Not to be too blunt or disrespectful, but Jesus spent three days in rehab and was done.
The other thing that got me was the amount of cash that flows into these mega churches. Some are the size of arenas – well, they are arenas. They spend they money on science bashing and political activism. All that money could have gone to help fight poverty – one of the true missions of Jesus Christ but one that seems to be ignored by the Evangelicals.
Here is an example, I run a soldier support charity called Books For Soldiers – any deployed soldier can request a book or DVD and we will send it to them free of charge. It is always a last minute rush to get together the money to pay for bandwidth never mind gently used copies of Stephen King novels. In the Evangelical movement I see tremendous waste that could go to helping people, instead they fund Ted Haggard – a meth addict.
It just pisses me off.
Yes, there are many phonies out there. They misrepresent God and Christ. It does not help to focus on them. Jesus said to pay them no mind; they are blind leaders of the blind. Look to the Real Where is He? Check out the website above.
Paul
What these people don’t understand is that the physical torment that Christ suffered at the hands of his Roman executioners was NOTHING compared to the excruciation in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He took upon himself the sins of every man and woman who ever had lived, or ever would live.
That is why, while some denominations use the cross as a symbol, indicating His DEATH (which was, just as you say, really no more violent than any criminal of that time), we “Mormons” prefer to focus on His SACRIFICE, which was bound up in His willingness to take that guilt upon Himself for our sakes.
No one but God could have done so. And there lies the real difference.