"Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

I attended a Good Friday Christian church service last week. A friend of a friend was playing his soprano sax during the service, and the aim was to hear his playing and then join him for dinner and drinks afterwards. Having had a fling with Catholicism a few years ago, I expected to find a few moments in the ritual service that might “fill my cup” however superficially. The music was very good, with a vocalist playing piano and our friend on sax.

And that’s about where anything of value ended.

The service consisted of several men and women coming forward to vamp on each of the seven statements Christ is reported to have made on the cross. Each of these was introduced by a clip depicting the crucifixion from Mel Gibson’s Christ Movie in which JC hangs from nails, flesh gashed and bruised, his body a network of open bleeding lacerations  – he looks like a pound of ground sirloin.

With one exception, a woman who reacted emotionally to her own experience of sacrifice, the explainers offered up a bland confusion of twisted fundamentalism and skewed metaphorical logic which they applied  to each of Christ’s proclamations. It was such a strange relay dissertation. The only thread was the oldest power play in Christianity: Original Sin. One guy stepped down after describing the horror of crucifixion as the lyrics for the next hymn appeared on screen extolling the cross as “wondrous and holy”.

And all around me were children – bored, confused, patiently tolerating this horse shit. There were a few that were paying attention; they worried me the most. And every 8 minutes, Ground Chuck on the cross courtesy of Mr. Gibson.

At the end of the service, I wanted to stand up and address the kids directly. “Hey, kids, for Christ’s sake, don’t struggle to understand this nonsense. Don’t take any of it seriously. Your parents are wracked with fear. That’s why this is going down. They have blithely put their brains on hold and allowed crack pots to fuck up a beautiful teaching tool. Don’t hate them when they’re older for putting your faces in Ground Chuck and Original Sin. They’re doing the best they can.”