Cracked Christ

I was walking back from the Javits Center the other day, and I passed by a school with this statue out front. It was covered by this heavy plastic barrier, which already had a hole in it, visible in the picture. Made me stop and think for a minute.

Now, I am not in the least bit religious. In fact, I’d say I’m somewhat anti religion. A belief system based on adhering to ethics in return for reward (the promise of eternal life) seems ideologically and spiritually less sound than an ethics system based on doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. Selflessness without the need for a metaphysical carrot to be dangled ahead of you.

I wonder how a religion, or many religions, that are based at their core on a fundamental dogma of love, tolerance, and understanding can systemically be co-opted by certain causes. In doing so, turning the faithful into absurdist strawman caricatures of themselves without realizing what they are perpetuating. How Christians who believe in the sanctity of life paradoxically bomb abortion clinics, or how Muslims, whose Koran actually states that the prophet Muhammad was the last of a series of godly prophets that included Jesus, and that Allah, Yahweh, and God are the same entity, commit mass murder in the name of their faith. A faith that advocates love and understanding.

Faith is a powerful tool. It’s something that at once is both beautiful and horrifying. Beautiful because it is one of those exemplary human traits that allow an individual to persevere through adversity, even when all other sources of motivation have been sucked dry. It can also spur entire groups of people to go commit heinous acts, not pausing to consider if their actions are just and ethical on an objective standpoint, but confidently and even joyfully if they are assured that such acts prove their faith and guarantee them high standing in whatever they believe.

That something that once stood for the very concept of peace and tolerance can come to represent the hatred, anger, and self delusion of those who claim to venerate it, to the point where it must be protected behind a thick barrier for fear of what those who oppose it might do, is one of the fundamental rots of corruption that is underlying the surface of our world today.