I Am Not Trying to Gross You Out But…

A teen in Pennsylvania may receive a two year prison sentence for mounting a statue to receive a ‘blow job’ by Jesus.

There is no disputing the lack of wisdom displayed in this act. However, one does wonder WWJD in this case?

When we recall the incredibly violent abuse and torture Jesus went through after his arrest and before his crucifixion, we tend to shy away from images that would offend. I recall the backlash against Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ which some wanted to call ‘torture porn.’ Yet, is it not the case that such is the stuff that, while it grosses out our imaginations, may well have been what Jesus underwent? Is it possible that some debauched Roman soldier may have even sexually assaulted Jesus? Our minds reel at such a perversion, yet if we are honest, we know what the human being is capable of, especially the human who has all power over another human.

So, this young man may have thought he was being funny or clever. Perhaps he hated Christianity. Perhaps he actually violated not just the letter but also the spirit of the law which states, “defacing, damaging, polluting or otherwise, physically mistreating in a way that the actor knows will outrage the sensibilities of persons likely to observe or discover the action.” Yes, what this young man did no doubts offends the sensibilities of many religious people. But WWJD?

I offer the following from my book What the Facebook?: Posts from the Edge of Christendom as Defense Exhibit A:

“How might we follow Jesus in forgiving others? In his allusion to the non-conscious in Luke 23 (“Abba, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing”) it seems Jesus decoupled action and intention. There seems to be a recognition on the part of the Crucified that whatever it is that is done (the sinful act) cannot be attributed to the person as though a person “chooses” sin; rather what is recognized is that what we do stems from deeper parts of ourselves than even we realize. Thus Jesus uncouples action and intention.

Our legal system, in its search for justice has found the need to keep them together. Premeditation or the belief that planning precedes action is necessary to convict a criminal of a crime. A defense attorney will often seek to show that an accused client did not “know what they were doing” thus uncoupling action and intention. In these cases the accused is remanded to mental health institutions and authorities rather than penal institutions. When we accuse one another of hurting us “on purpose” we bring together that which God has decoupled in Jesus. We need to believe that people hurt us on purpose in order to blame them (and thus justify punishing them).

If like God, we learn to dissociate sinful actions from intentionality, we may just discover the freedom we have in relation to others, knowing that the self that we know as our ‘self’ (our ego) is but the tip of the iceberg of our greater self (which is the sum of all our relationships and their influence on our life). So also the ‘self’ we know as the ‘other’ is but the tip of the iceberg of all their relationships and influences. We often do and say things and when confronted later say ‘I didn’t mean that.” What we are acknowledging is that our action didn’t match our intention. In addition, the ‘other’ may have unconsciously misrepresented our action and intention due to their own different or even broken grids. Therefore forgiveness occurs because God has recognized that we experience so much of life, not as conscious autonomous beings, but as non-conscious relational beings. Forgiveness is the act of saying to the other “I know that what you do is not something you would choose to do if you were free and that you are in bondage to the ‘principalities and powers’ of the influences and relationships that have ‘determined’ your life.”

Forgiving others, as God forgives us, is to recognize and act upon this uncoupling of intention and action so that when we are hurt by others we may say to ourselves (and to them) “I forgive you because I know that it is not you who is acting this way but that you are acting out of the bondage of all the confused and painful relationships in your life history.” Thus, we are called to forgive others as God has forgiven us, freely, graciously, and unconditionally. We stand in a posture of forgiveness in relation to all, before, prior to and apart from any acknowledgment of sin or repentance. The ‘other’ is forgiven, even as we are forgiven. This is the extraordinary freedom that allows repentance to come into being without coercion, with no fear of retaliation, but motivated entirely by love. It is not like a confession which we are forced to make. True repentance is never experienced as a command but only as a gift which is lived into true reconciliation.”

The Pennsylvania legal system may not forgive this young man what he has done, but he can rest assured that the King of Kings has indeed forgiven him.