Suffer the Students

Even as an atheist, which I declared myself to be for many years, I took inspiration from the story of Christ. The only difference was that I felt free to mock the Scriptures here and there, something I dare not do any more. (My cartoon character, the Holy Roller, is merely intended to parody bad evangelists.) My sense of God's presence and of the existence of an afterlife has come to me by intuition and I have learned that my intuition is highly reliable by the exercise of rejecting this mindset in late 2007, after my first conversion experience, and experiencing all the horrors that resulted from this decision. I'm a little ashamed that my faith was not strong enough to sustain me the first time, but I am relieved that I have been given a second chance to stand up for the Lord in this very evil time in history. One advantage that Christians have over adherents of other faiths is that Christ knows our suffering. Unlike all other deities, He submitted to the humiliation of pain and death. When we are in pain, we can be comforted by praying to a God who knows our pain. And since we are all doomed to die, we can turn to Christ for comfort at any point along our fateful passage. There are a lot of suffering souls out there and they are all welcome to visit me here. If you're a student who gets picked on in class, I hope you can compare your situation with mine and gain some real perspective. Had this gang rape of my music and comedy occurred when I was younger, I might not have survived this long. But once you get out of that classroom, the consent of your peers becomes less and less important.
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© 2007, 2015. Statements by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.

Selling Christ Short

I have always been interested in information around the life of Jesus. One prominent researcher in this area is Elaine Pagels, whose book, The Origin of Satan, first suggested to me the possibility that the official Christian account of Christ's execution was altered to make it acceptable to the Romans. It is a compelling argument, backed up by strong evidence describing Pilate as the kind of governor who would crucify people at the drop of a hat, but it fails to heed the extraordinary nature of Christ and how his presence often led people to behave out of character. The extraordinary nature of Christ, even outside of his arguable miracles, was that this common carpenter's son who was doomed to suffer a slave's execution would be worshiped as God incarnate by billions of humans for millennia following his death. I believe that such greatness has a way of reaching back to its source from the future, endowing the person with a kind of larger-than-life aura. Peter had a good solid career as a fisherman and all it took was one visit from Christ, a total stranger, to make Peter abandon his livelihood and follow Christ all the way to his own crucifixion. So perhaps Pilate was equally moved by Christ's presence and determined not to take responsibility for his death. If the Prefect of Judea intuited that he was about to execute the future God of the Roman empire, it would certainly trouble him. I think the source of antisemitism is essentially religious and centers on the refusal of Jews to accept Christ as their Messiah. I think this would exist free and clear of how Christ's execution is depicted in the Bible. Antisemitism is the result of misinterpreting the brilliant teachings of Christ, for most Christians do not hate Jews. And some Jews have even converted to Christianity. There's an organization called Jews for Jesus that may support me in this argument, even though I'm a Gentile. March 7, 2015: Since this is a sensitive topic, I must be careful how I present this argument. I do not wish to add any more hate to the world. I agree that it was the Romans who killed Jesus. But I also believe that Jewish religious authorities were threatened by Jesus and wanted him killed. They thought he was a false prophet and a dangerous influence on the crowds. Jewish laws are quite specific in the Old Testament on how to handle anyone who might equate himself with the Most High God. Such a man was to be killed. But in Christ's lifetime, Israel, or Judea, was under Roman occupation. The Romans enforced the laws of their provinces and punished anyone who might try to do so in their place. So the Jewish religious authorities needed the permission of Roman authorities to execute Jesus or perhaps these High Priests would have ended up on crosses themselves. So Jesus, the way I see it, was killed by both the Jews and the Gentiles. All of humanity is responsible for his death. And while the Gospel of John may unfairly quote the Jews as wishing to take collective responsibility for this blood guilt, its depiction of his manner of execution on a Roman cross equally blames the Romans. Yes, and let's not forget what makes Christ great: his death and resurrection. How could Christ accomplish his holy mission without going to the cross? His cruel execution was necessary. To impose punishment on his perceived murderers is to contradict God's plan.
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© 2007, 2015. Statements by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.