See The Movie, Buy The Nail

[SHRED]

See The Movie, Buy The Nail
Jesus died for your sins -- and also to sell you a really bitchin' "Passion" coffee mug


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/02/25/notes022504.DTL


<SNIP>

But nothing says "slightly masochistic Jesus fanatic" like adorning your fine self with a two-inch silver pewter crucifixion-nail pendant, hanging 'round your neck from a nice 24-inch leather cord. Oh my yes.

It's an actual product, available right now for about ten bucks from Mel Gibson's official "Passion of the Christ" movie Web site, while supplies last, which they will forever and ever because they're doubtlessly made in bulk by Malaysian sweatshop workers wearing faded "Lethal Weapon IV" T-shirts who all believe in a very unhappy Allah. Irony, it knoweth no boundaries.


<SNIP>

As always, it is your choice. You can think you need to have your spiritual belief coated in gallons of blood and death and grisly sacrifice and really bitchin' cinematography, of cruel beatings and nightmarish tortures and gruesome crucifixions, and that's what you want to zero in on and make extra-super clear and "real" so as to have everyone be equally hammered into guilty pulpy submission.

Or, you know, you don't. Jesus, rumor has it, didn't die for sin. He died for enlightenment. He didn't die so people would walk around all day in ugly nail necklaces thinking about bloody violent death, swapping quote cards and thinking they know something of the divine. He died to indicate humanity's need to purge itself of hate, war, violence and ego -- you know, all those things now performed in his name. Right, Dubya?

It might be as simple as saying, you know, the last thing anyone really needs hammered into them right now is more brutal, fanatical sanctimony on a string.