that scandalous love.

Perhaps one of the single greatest misunderstandings of an historical event is the collective religious interpretation of the passion of the Christ. The belief that Christ's death as God for God was the key to making available salvation for all men who believe. It is foundational in the Christian religious system and it's doctrines that God sacrificed His Son, who was also God, in order to redeem a condemned mankind. Each year millions celebrate Good Friday in remembering the crucifixion of Christ. The celebration continues on Easter Sunday when the resurrection is remembered; churches filled to overflowing with eager would-be candidates for salvation.

In all of this hubbub and rememberance, the truth that Christ was a man is often overlooked and/or marginalized by the religious establishment. Yet, God, by virtue of His divine nature, is not capable of dying, and therefore it had to be the man that suffered in His stead. Furthermore, the scandal of this great passion is that a single man stood, alone, in the place of many and took the wrath of God upon His shoulders. It is a tale of promethean significance. God the Son, as a man, standing in front of God the Father and offering Himself up for the sake of the guilty. As if Isaac, even after hearing the voice of the angel speaking to Abraham, grabs hold of his father's hand and drives the knife into his own chest, for the sake of his father. Jesus, in the place of every man, woman and child, stands in defiance to the justice of His Father which demands an infinite sacrifice for the infinite offenses committed against Him.

Illustrating His humanity, the writer Mark includes in his gospel the request of Jesus to His Father that the hour might pass Him by; that the cup might be taken from Him. Three times does He ask. Three times He pleads but always surrenders His will to the Father's. Later in the story, as Jesus hangs on the cross in agony, He cries out to His Father those all too human words, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" God the Son, Jesus Christ is forsaken by God the Father and condemned. After uttering a loud cry and breathing His last breath, Christ, a human being, dies.

That Christ suffered a painful death is exponentially intensified by His innocence. Furthermore, the scandal of this passionate tale is underscored by the fact that God, in accepting the sacrifice of Christ, condemns an innocent man and forsakes the most righteous of His creatures to ever walk the face of His creation. Ironically, the symbolism in what follows immediately after Christ's death, that is the tearing of the veil in the temples, reveals the subsequent history of Christianity over the next two thousand years to be an exercise in completely missing the point, in that no longer were ritual sacrifices or traditional religious rites necessary for Man to touch the Divine.

The unorthodox rabbi who healed the sick and taught the people about the kingdom of heaven, stood in direct contrast to the religious leaders who screamed for His death. That His life and its teachings were then taken and interpreted by the propagandist Paul illustrates the ignorance of Man and his insatiable pride in pursuing comfort. The perfect realization of human potential in Christ is distorted into the model of religious living and distributed as a commodity for alleviating guilt. Eventually the Christian Religious regime grows to take over most of the known world via the Holy Roman Empire, oppressing millions, their self-justification arising from Paul's distorted understanding of Christ's defiance.

So there are three scandals, that scandalous love of Christ in offering Himself up as a human for the rest of humanity, that scandalous wrath of God the Father in forsaking His very Son, the full realization of human potential, to death, and the scandal of Christianity which distorts the message of Christ in order to produce a systematic theology by which the religious leaders retain their authority over their fellow men. One scandal is to be applauded, the other above human judgement, the third is to be condemned.