To think the parish newsletter is not appropriate

[NikoBellic]

I'm not talking about the notices regarding the horticultural society, nor am I referring to the village "300 Club", or Gwen's amazing contribution to the village hall this month...

...I realise that unless you live in a rural area, much like fibre broadband, you won't get this...

Each month the parish council post a newsletter through my front door. A quaint little wedge of folded paper with some useful information on local gas safe engineers and who is raising what for which charity, interspersed with reminders to pick up dog poo. The outer cover is usually a lot quality 1995 clip art file along religious lines, printed onto coloured paper of some sort. This month, for the start of spring and the Easter period, its a sort of yellow. Its the cover that I'm not completely comfortable with...

We always hear, particularly from the type of person who lives in a village and reads the parish newsletter, that children should not be subjected to images of violence, sex, and general "bad stuff"...

SO WHY IS OK TO POST A PICTURE OF A BLEEDING MAN BEING CRUCIFIED THROUGH MY LETTERBOX!? (Even if it is in 1995 clip art form).

If I were to post an image of a man being hung through someone's front door I'd have to face, at the very least, a police caution. Seems like double standards from where I'm sat.

In an area where Nigel Farage gets a pat on the back (a man who is offended by seeing a breastfeeding mother in a pub...) why does religion get special dispensation?

Is it OK because its, you know, Jesus?

Am I being unreasonable?

I suppose but I see man being tortured and I believe he was the son of god, maybe I am the strange one though

Hmm yes and I know the story and also see man being tortured to death, probably because I'm an athiest and so don't believe in the resurrection part, which softens the dying part for many believers I assume. I simply see a man (like any other) being tortured to death and then he's dead. Which conincides with your belief as when he was killed he was a mortal man, that's the point isn't it.

This is all really interesting

yeah. I see that. I suppose the ascending to heaven does lessen the impact to some extent. but surely everyone, believer or not can see that it isn't really feasible?

So I guess we are both seeing the image in the same way, from opposite ends of the belief spectrum, we look at it and see what it shows.

I think it's nothing more than desensitisation that leads anyone to see any different. Because obviously a person being crucified is horrific.

Even if you believe in the ascension, you still believe that he lived and died as a mortal, that actually happened to him, though. So, from that POV, it shouldn't soften, and from a faith perspective it shouldn't, because the whole point is that he was tortured to death in the most brutal way. That's the whole point of the story, he suffered as we do.

yes. it is a shame that the majority of people have become desensitised though, as it is horrific and it just goes to show that if exposed to enough violence it doesn't affect you anymore which is saddening really as a major part of being human is caring about what happens to others.

A question of looking but not seeing I guess.

I remember when I was quite young my parents took us to Rome and there is a very famous statue of Jesus dead being held by his mother and I found it incredibly moving and quite upsetting, which is rare for me I'm not an art appreciation sort of a person (in addition to my lack of spirituality!). It was upsetting because it showed a dead man being held by his mother. These things are upsetting, aren't they? How can they not be. Familiarity I guess.

what about oxfam and the like and their leaflets depicting ACTUAL real people photographed in terrible states of health and dying? Surely they're much worse than clip art

YY deliprancer. Off the top of my head some of the most powerful anti-war images are extremely violent.

Do NOT click if easily offended. These images are very upsetting, though necessary IMO.

As I said: DO NOT CLICK ON THEM if offended by images of violence.

I think it is a very important issue and I don't want anyone crying to MNHQ that they've been upset.

Leonard Siffleet, Australian POW of the Japanese

Republican soldier in the Spanish Civil War He may have been a foreign fighter.

Killing of a Vietcong prisoner The executioner was portrayed as a villain but the prisoner was undoubtedly guilty of brutality and possibly war crimes which makes some of us understand how clouded war can be. It was one of the images that turned the tide against US involvement in Vietnam

[[https://www.google.com/search?q=kim+phuc&espv=2&biw=1527&bih=841&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=3-sXVdS0DMi07gbXw4DoBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#imgrc=Gk_I-8ugpJm8jM%253A%3Bv9XLHziMIQpsTM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.lobero.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F07%252F2012-01-19-Kim-Phuc-Image_web-media.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dailypaul.com%252F324295%252Fkim-phuc-the-napalm-ed-girl-forgives-capt-who-coordinated-it-in-personon-veterans-day-will-world-forgive-nwo-empire%3B1800%3B1356
as was this]]

Kim Phuc is alive and happy.

There are worse images that could be posted through your door OP.

It was this one.

Well obviously there are worse images people do utterly horrific things to each other all the time the world over.

Still, they are not generally printed on the front of parish newsletters and posted through front doors en masse.

Even the press in the UK has a code around not showing graphic images, and on the telly as well, they give a warning and will cut off / blank out bits that are "too" violent.

for people not au fait with the story it's just a man nailed to a cross wearing a crown of thorns, covered in blood, who will die shortly of his injuries

That is exactly why you don't understand.

And it doesn't matter whether you think he was the son of God or a radical thinker and seeker after good.

As a Christian, for me, the difference between someone who is a "regular man dying on the cross" and Jesus, is the fact that through Jesus dying on the cross we can achieve salvation.

It was excruciating, painful and terrible but it was also an act of complete love that someone was prepared to die for me and my sins, that gruesome and horrible death. This is why the cross and Jesus dying on it is such a powerful symbol - it represents God's grace and love.

It does make me sad when I think of Jesus as a regular person but then I remember he was not a regular person and I do feel less sad. His death was not in vain.

Even if you believe in the ascension, you still believe that he lived and died as a mortal, that actually happened to him, though. So, from that POV, it shouldn't soften, and from a faith perspective it shouldn't, because the whole point is that he was tortured to death in the most brutal way. That's the whole point of the story, he suffered as we do.

Yes. For people of faith it's not softened. For them this was a real man who lived and died in the most horrible way.

I have no faith but still believe that the man we call Jesus lived and died for his beliefs which were pretty, pretty, pretty good .

In olden time the English people for it did not seem fitting to me that I should speak of other people's observance of the year and yet be silent about my own nation's calculated their months according to the course of the moon. Hence, after the manner of the Greeks and the Romans (the months) take their name from the Moon, for the Moon is called mona and the month monath.

The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Solmonath; March Hrethmonath; April, Eosturmonath; May, Thrimilchi; June, Litha; July, also Litha; August, Weodmonath; September, Halegmonath; October, Winterfilleth; November, Blodmonath; December, Giuli, the same name by which January is called. ...

Nor is it irrelevant if we take the time to translate the names of the other months. ... Hrethmonath is named for their goddess Hretha, to whom they sacrificed at this time. Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance. Thrimilchi was so called because in that month the cattle were milked three times a day...

Bede may have gotten it wrong but I am sure pre christians would have celebrated this time of year and that much of the symbology is pre christian.

Christianity was a clever evangelical religion, which is why it spread so far and so fast. They built their places of worship on top of the old places of worship. Often the yew trees in the graveyard are older than the church itself and were where people used to gather.

It's so hard to say anything for sure as pagans didn't record anything.

I find the assertion that the image of a bloodied corpse streched on an instrument of torture is OK because his death means "we can achieve salvation".

According to who? Only those who have chosen to believe this - a minority of people in this country now. Why should the rest of us be forced to look at it? Again, we have the insidious assumption of religious privilege that should not be tolerated.

Would it be OK if I started a religion which involved the stabbing to death of a human being and posted gruesome pictures through people's doors - with the tenuous justification that it's fine because a) it's connected to a religion and b) the murder of this person means that you all have the chance to go to a paradise I invented after you're dead?

I'd be arrested. And, of course, if I produced literature as hate filled as the Bible for my "holy book" it would be banned outright.

Never mind parish newsletters - let's please remember that 3D images of this bloody corpse stretched out on an instrument of torture hangs in every Catholic SCHOOL in the country.

This should be outlawed.

80sChild Tell you what would make you even less "sad". Jesus almost certainly didn't exist at all. Nonexistent beings don't suffer.

That should make your day. HTH.

Limited Your belief that Jesus existed is unfounded and mistaken. Do a search for the "Did Jesus exist" thread from a couple of years ago and see that, actually, there is not the merest whisper of evidence that this man ever existed.

It shocks me that even atheists continue to perpetuate this myth of evidence of historicity.

I find the assertion that the image of a bloodied corpse streched on an instrument of torture is OK because his death means "we can achieve salvation".

I don't know where you live CaffeLatteIceCream but in the UK most images of the Crucifixion are sanitised.

And to people of faith and none, the fate of the person called Jesus, his belief system and political martyrdom and willingness to accept humiliation, pain and death means an awful lot.

Caffe There is plenty of evidence that a person we now know as Jesus Christ existed and he opposed prevailing political views in Judea and the wider Roman Empire roughly 2,000 years ago.

Just as I know for a fact that someone known as Spartacus did the same thing about 60 years before, led a huge army of fighters and people longing for freedom from Rome and was also crucified along with many others when his rebellion failed.

Spartacus's aims were mixed but I might have given it a go.

I don't think Jesus was the son of God. I do think he existed and was executed as a political prisoner whose aims were good and definitely worth following as a moral code.

How can anyone be sure and assert as fact that Jesus didn't exist. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence and all that.

Limited

How do you sanitise a depiction of a crucifixion? They cleaned up the blood aspect? Oh, that's OK then

You are wrong. It's a common mistake though so I don't blame you, but you are still completely wrong. Not only is there not "plenty of evidence", there isn't any at all.

What does Spartacus have to do with anything?

Read that thread. If you ignore the hysterical rants from certain Christians who can't cope with being confronted by reality, it's extremely informative.

You are wrong

OK

Queen

There's evidence that he was an imagined "sky god". Paul/Saul says as much in his letters.

The absence of evidence quote is misleading and not altogether true. Absence of evidence is indeed compelling in situations where you would expect to find some.

If I told you I had an elephant living in my garage and you could find no trace of one, this would be good evidence that I did not, in fact, have an elephant living in my garage.

And given what we're expected to believe about Jesus and his life, it is curious indeed that we can find not the slightest trace of him. Not the slightest.

How did Spider-Man defeat doctor octopus?

OP I think you should suggest to the editor of this publication they use a picture if Jesus rising from the dead, you know walking out of the tomb with as outstretched. cos that's a really easy one to explain to kids