The Uncrucifixion

Healing the wounds of Christ through ourselves

I think about Jesus a lot: who he was (assuming he existed) and why his life story remains resonant across humanity (colonialism aside).

I think about how I, like so many people raised in the church, rebelled against "Christianity" due to the hostile behavior of "Christians" who failed to see just how un-Christlike they actually were.

I wonder how a man who practically begged people to learn love and peace became the mascot of so many hateful movements.

And I wonder if the portrayal of his crucifixion has something to do with it.

Just ponder this. We see Jesus's broken, bloody body displayed everywhere: from the stained glass windows of churches where we learn about him, to the necklaces his devotees wear out in the world.
I wonder if seeing one rare example of pacifism symbolically slaughtered, over and over, similarly wounds the subconscious mind of anyone who identifies with him & genuinely wants to behave more like him: peaceful, compassionate, loving — but also uncompromisingly radical, fearless in pursuit of righteousness and truth.

Finally, I wonder if this is what Salvador Dali was thinking about, when he painted this reimagination of Jesus's crucifixion on a 4D hypercube cross (tesseract).

No wounds, no blood, no crown of thorns.

Instead:

Jesus in a paradoxically sleepy-blissful/passive-powerful pose,
free, levitating, having transcended the checkerboard of duality,
and basking in golden light.

I wonder what it would do for the psyche — individually and collectively — to meditate on an image like this, to counter the subconscious impression made by the more brutal traditional crucifixion image.