Good Friday
25 March 2016 01:36 pm"God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own — in the over-ripeness of the most splendid and sophisticated Empire the world has ever seen. In a nation famous for its religious genius and under a government renowned for its efficiency, He was executed by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators. His executioners made vulgar jokes about Him, called Him filthy names, taunted Him, smacked him in the face, flogged Him with the cat, and hanged Him on the common gibbet — a bloody, dusty, sweaty, and sordid business.
If you show people that, they are shocked. So they should be. If that does not shock them, nothing can. If the mere representation of it has an air of irreverence, what is to be said about the deed? It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear that story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all."
Dorothy L. Sayers, from the Introduction to The Man Born To Be King.
If you show people that, they are shocked. So they should be. If that does not shock them, nothing can. If the mere representation of it has an air of irreverence, what is to be said about the deed? It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear that story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all."
Dorothy L. Sayers, from the Introduction to The Man Born To Be King.
