4 ms·
Tangentially, as a catholic myself, I recently began to find it weird how openly my religion is displaying a medieval torture setup with an obviously tortured,
by graeber_28927 4y ago
Tangentially, as a catholic myself, I recently began to find it weird how openly my religion is displaying a medieval torture setup with an obviously tortured, wounded and half-dead man on it, mid-suffering. Not only is it everywhere in churches, but often villages will have big close-to-life-sized, colored statues of him bleeding. And grandmas have it hang all around their house too for everyone to see.
Imagine if we replaced every cross statue with some other form of torture that is less symbolic. Say, the scene from saw where he just cut his leg off.
Would you object to that scene being displayed as a big ad in your city, or to it being immortalized in your local cemetery as a colored statue? What would your grandma say if you hung posters of that in her living room and her bedroom?
I have to admit though, I never found it weird as a child, and I don't think it affected me one bit. Whereas the Spiderman movie spiderbite really upped my phobia of spiders when I saw it at 6.
I don't know what to make of all this, I just learned to pause and find all of it weird for a second every once in a while.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- forgotmyname2 4y ago> a medieval torture setup Why would you call it medieval?
- swores 4y agoBecause that word doesn't only mean "from the medieval period". > "having a quality (such as cruelty) associated with the Middle Ages", or > "extremely outmoded or antiquated" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/medieval https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/medieval
- BlueTemplar 4y agoI am not a Christian, but AFAIK the "Jesus suffered and died for our sins" bit is pretty central ? Also, IMHO "leg cut off" would be much more traumatic for the viewer. AFAIK most representations avoid the blood too, or don't color it, or don't show much of it ?
- ljlolel 4y agoThey always have drops of blood coming out of crown of thorns and the stakes dripping down
- mongol 4y agoI am thinking of Nietzsche's thoughts on Christianity being built on slave morality.
- mejutoco 4y agoCatholic art got a lot more explicit highlighting suffering as a response to Protestantism. I remember studying this in art history. From wikipedia: The Council of Trent proclaimed that architecture, painting and sculpture had a role in conveying Catholic theology. Any work that might arouse "carnal desire" was inadmissible in churches, while any depiction of Christ's suffering and explicit agony was desirable and proper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Reformation#Baroque_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Reformation#Baroque_ar...
- exprez135 4y agoIt's especially interesting to contrast this rise in the brutality, violence, and realistic physicality of western Christianity's art with traditional Byzantine iconography. My first thought goes to Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Seeing an image of the dead Christ from Holbein [1]: "At that painting!" the prince suddenly cried out, under the impression of an unexpected thought. "At that painting! A man could even lose his faith from that painting!" "Lose it he does," Rogozhin suddenly agreed unexpectedly. They had already reached the front door. "What?" the prince suddenly stopped. […] By contrast, I once read or heard somewhere that in Byzantine depictions of the crucifixion, one cannot really know if it is the cross that holds up Christ's body or He who holds up the cross. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_of_the_Dead_Christ_in_the_Tomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_of_the_Dead_Christ_in...
- int_19h 4y agoI can assure you that there are plenty of crosses that very clearly and unambiguously hold up the crucified Jesus in Eastern Orthodox churches and homes.
- sfmike 4y agoIts weird but without that sacrifice there would be no "christ" as it is a core event of the entire faith. So while weird it's logical it's so universally symbolic.
- christophilus 4y agoCatholicism is weird. (I say this as a Catholic.) St Lucy holding her gouged-out eyeballs, relics (super old pieces of human bodies), etc. Everywhere you look, there’s something quite strange. And the deeper you go, the stranger it all is. I love it, though.
- sAbakumoff 4y agoI object to any religion that tries to impose its principles on the entire population. Just like, you know, those right-wing USA lunatics who prohibit abortion or Taliban in Afghanistan who deny basic human rights. Essentially, these 2 groups of people are just about the same.