# Crucifixion of Christ (for kids) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 8, 2015, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014 "2015-11-08T15:50:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/61 "2015-11-10T19:25:21Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > I was an adult before I understood the horror of crucifixion. I’ve been hearing about Jesus since forever, and it gets old pretty quick. Or at least it did for me. And this is even though I grew up in a very secular country, so I can only imagine how desensitized you get somewhere where Christianity is a big deal. Crucifixion is, you know, just Jesus’s thing, he’s always hanging out on that cross. It’s what he does, whatever, and no one ever seemed to worry much about it. > > I got a different perspective when I realized that crucifixion isn’t a Jesus thing, it’s a Roman thing. It’s so associated with Jesus that it’s easy to get the impression that he was the only one who was ever crucified (although in the actual story there are obviously other people being crucified _on that same day_, so that should tell you something right there). But the Romans crucified people _a lot_. In 71 BC, Crassus had six thousand captives from Spartacus’s defeated slave army crucified all along the Appian way. Which, BTW, is one of the main Roman roads in Italy. Imagine seeing that as you go into town to do your shopping. On the one hand, maybe you get used to the sight after a few trips. On the other hand, if you’re a slave, it’ll probably make you think twice about rebelling any time soon. > > I guess what I mean is that when you’re the Son of God, and you’re dying for the sins of humanity, and you’re going to rise again in three days anyway, crucifixion is OK, in a sense. It’s kind of hard to empathize all that much with a guy like Jesus, since he’s literally superhuman. > > But if you’re just some person (maybe a slave fighting for your freedom in a slave rebellion, so not even a bad person, by any moral standard), and you’re roped to a cross (sometimes nailed, although, in fairness, people were apparently mostly just tied up there), and just left there until you die (from dehydration, asphyxiation, heck, probably boredom, if nothing else gets you) - yeah, that sucks. It’s not an easy death, and certainly not a quick one. You would probably have time to go insane. It would be torture in a bunch of different ways. Heck, it was most likely even worse than it sounds. Crucifixion sucked so much that even the Romans thought it sucked, and they usually weren’t squeamish about these things. You weren’t allowed to do it to free Roman citizens. > > And it could happen to you, and it could happen to me. Well, at least if we were non-citizens and got on the wrong side of the Roman authorities. I don’t know about you guys, but that gives me the chills. Apparently, crucifixion wasn’t all the Romans did to Jesus (and others) - there was also the scourging, etc. 😉 I have a bit of a funny story about that … I may have told it before, but it is appropriate here. I’m not Christian (in fact, I am Jewish by background), but my wife is from a _very_ traditional, very religious “folk Catholic” family. When I was first dating her, many years ago, after some time she invited me to her parent’s house to meet the family. Her parents were making dinner, she was primping herself, so for some time I was left sitting by myself in her parent’s living room. Now, I’m a compulsive reader. Left with nothing to do, I like to read - pretty well anything available. Unfortunately, I had nothing with me, and none of the stuff on the coffee table for visitors to read was in English (they are Ukrainian Catholics) … except one book. This book was some sort of prayer guide. What it had, was a little daily meditation - like a calendar - of thoughts you were supposed to meditate on, while doing your daily prayers. It had perforated page corners to fold down so you would know you had “done” that day. The interesting thing was this: that each day represented something nasty that had been done to Jesus. Given that there were 365 days, that meant they had to creatively “invent” a few that don’t actually appear in the Gospels. So poor Jesus, in addition to being cruxified, got abused 364 different ways! Naturally, I turned to “today’s date”. What I learned was that, on this very day, her parents, while praying, were supposed to meditate on “the Jews” _ramming turds into Jesus’ mouth_ (something I’m pretty sure isn’t in the gospels!). I knew they had actually done this meditation, because the corner was turned down … something that caused me a certain amount of new-boyfriend anxiety, as I was about to have dinner with them, and they knew I was Jewish. 😃 [In actual fact, they have never been anything but courteous to me, and I’ve now known them for more than a quarter-century … but I still remember that anxiety] ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/62 "2015-11-10T19:39:27Z")
To be honest, as a Protestant I do wish we stressed confession a bit more. In our Lutheran Church we have this little pre-written confession in our services and sing Kyrie Eleison and that’s about it. Some stuff about how it is good to confess our sins to God, but very unstressed. I have found that the few times I’ve been involved confession and being reminded that you are forgiven by God for whatever you may have done and whatever you though was unforgivable is an incredible feeling. That sort of peace and feeling of forgiveness has been immeasurably helpful in my faith journey and really helped me to forgive others. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/63 "2015-11-10T21:02:20Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > I have found that the few times I’ve been involved confession and being reminded that you are forgiven by God for whatever you may have done and whatever you though was unforgivable is an incredible feeling. That sort of peace and feeling of forgiveness has been immeasurably helpful in my faith journey and really helped me to forgive others. It is a wonderful feeling. Any stress or apprehension is relieved but beyond that, the peace and joy is incredible. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/64 "2015-11-10T21:11:15Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > To be honest, as a Protestant I do wish we stressed confession a bit more. In our Lutheran Church we have this little pre-written confession in our services and sing Kyrie Eleison and that’s about it. Some stuff about how it is good to confess our sins to God, but very unstressed. I have found that the few times I’ve been involved confession and being reminded that you are forgiven by God for whatever you may have done and whatever you though was unforgivable is an incredible feeling. That sort of peace and feeling of forgiveness has been immeasurably helpful in my faith journey and really helped me to forgive others. [There is a Lutheran order of individual confession and forgiveness](http://synodresourcecenter.org/wma/worship/occasional/other/0026/confession.html). And the same rules of absolute confidentiality apply as in the Roman church. My wife is a Lutheran pastor, and she does this one quite a bit. She was raised Roman Catholic, so she is used to the idea. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/65 "2015-11-10T21:32:40Z")
Supposedly, I was the only person in my class to make the priest laugh during confession. I’ve always felt a little guilty about that… ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/66 "2015-11-10T21:46:18Z")
> [@Count\_Blucher](#): > > I’ve always felt a little guilty about that… So, confess it? ---
**Author:** ![pianodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@pianodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pianodave)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/67 "2015-11-10T22:22:16Z")
I have a question about forgiveness. IMHO, the only true party that can forgive a sin is the aggrieved or offended party. What happens if a priest forgives you (absolves you) when you steal some money from a relative, but the relative doesn’t forgive you at all? Why would you trust the priest’s forgiveness more than the relative’s? The priest is someone who wasn’t there at the time of the sin and no real connection to the sin besides what you choose to tell him or her. Of course you can feel sorry for what you’ve done, but in terms of being genuinely forgiven, a priest, who does this to hundreds of people, can’t provide anything more than meaningless fluff meant to make you feel better. IMO you need to confront the offended party directly and look for forgiveness from them. If they are for whatever reason unable to forgive you, or if you sin against something that cannot “forgive” (e.g. The earth, a small child or animal incapable of speech) you are screwed. The only place you can search for direct forgiveness is yourself. Because only you know the exact level to which you failed to meet your own personal standards. And there’s nothing wrong with that in itself. It just means that no priest knows you better than yourself. If you want forgiveness from God, pray and hope you find what you’re looking for. But confession seems to me to be glorified counseling with the hope that if you confess good enough, you can be forgiven and have the option to shove the real issues under the rug. Some sins can’t be forgiven. Those that can’t should be acknowledged and meditated upon so that a person can improve. But saying you feel “free” and “at peace” is buying into the idea that the words of a person (or even God!) will fix the real problems, which stem from a personal failure and the victimization of another party, which may or may not be capable of being redressed. This is just my opinion. No offense intended. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/68 "2015-11-11T01:02:56Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > I have a question about forgiveness. > > IMHO, the only true party that can forgive a sin is the aggrieved or offended party. What happens if a priest forgives you (absolves you) when you steal some money from a relative, but the relative doesn’t forgive you at all? Why would you trust the priest’s forgiveness more than the relative’s? The priest is someone who wasn’t there at the time of the sin and no real connection to the sin besides what you choose to tell him or her. This is partially addressed by something **Nava** said earlier: > [@Nava](#): > > And the Father is capital-F: forgiveness comes from the guy without vowels in His name, not from the man in black. IOW the priest isn’t offering you his personal forgiveness; he’s conveying to you God’s forgiveness. I think there’s a sense in which your sin, if it’s against another person, is _also_ a sin against God—in a way that may or may not be analogous to the way, if I harmed a small child, I’d have sinned against, and want forgiveness from, the child’s parents. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/69 "2015-11-11T15:03:49Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > I have a question about forgiveness. > > IMHO, the only true party that can forgive a sin is the aggrieved or offended party. The only true party that can forgive a sin is God. And every sin can be forgiven by Him. He has the capacity that humans don’t. The priest doesn’t offer “meaningless fluff to help you feel better”, he offers the forgiveness of God. As has been mentioned, you are also encouraged to make recompense to those you have harmed. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/70 "2015-11-11T15:23:18Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > As has been mentioned, you are also encouraged to make recompense to those you have harmed. Which includes, if reasonably possible, asking for forgiveness. Father Mendiburu (may he have been received in His grace) was an amazing psychologist. He asked about the specific circumstances surrounding fights with siblings (which I expect to be the sin most reported by kids), then go sort of Socratic on how to avoid escalation from “he pushed me” to “we’re rolling on the floor kicking and biting”, and then he would give us instructions to ask for forgiveness if we ever found ourselves having a fight with our siblings again; “don’t go and ask for his forgiveness now, when he’s not angry and can’t even remember the last time you had a fight, ask him if you ever have a fight again”. We were to stop fighting and ask for forgiveness right then and there. I can’t speak for others, but in my case it was a big deterrent to letting a bit of snarling evolve into a lot of yelling. I remember that he would also say that there are situations when anger is a perfectly reasonable reaction, but what’s wrong is letting that anger cause you to do something worse than whatever triggered it: getting angry because some little turd of a brat is trying to kick you, ok; beating him up, Not Ok. ---
**Author:** ![pianodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@pianodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pianodave)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/71 "2015-11-11T17:05:04Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > The only true party that can forgive a sin is God. And every sin can be forgiven by Him. He has the capacity that humans don’t. The priest doesn’t offer “meaningless fluff to help you feel better”, he offers the forgiveness of God. > > As has been mentioned, you are also encouraged to make recompense to those you have harmed. So, a sin in general is acknowledged to be more an offense against yourself and your relationship with God than against the victim? Isn’t that odd? That means that your victim is doubly victimized because you don’t even have to say you’re sorry. You are “encouraged to make recompense to those you have harmed.” It’s therefore not required that you try to make amends with those you wronged, it’s only required that you find forgiveness from God. If God forgives everything, it seems a skip and a jump away from using God as a crutch to get away with some bad shit. You are telling me the Father offers the forgiveness of God. Is it possible for forgiveness to be denied? I hate that true contrition wins you spiritual points, but ignores the victimized party. This forgiveness seems to be the goal, rather than the actual redress of the victim. Once you have been forgiven, does it even matter that the other person still feels slighted? How can you put more stock in this spiritual idea than another person literally telling you, for example, “I will never forgive you and never want to see you again?” A person’s feelings are subjective, yes, but they are valid. I can’t imagine leaving someone wronged and after a nice confession think that I’m back on God’s good side. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/72 "2015-11-11T17:30:36Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > You are “encouraged to make recompense to those you have harmed.” It’s therefore not required that you try to make amends with those you wronged You don’t see a contradiction between these two sentences? Or are you just bothered because “encouraged” =/= “required”? > [@](#): > > I hate that true contrition wins you spiritual points, but ignores the victimized party. Is it “true contrition” if it ignores the victimized party? > [@](#): > > How can you put more stock in this spiritual idea than another person literally telling you, for example, “I will never forgive you and never want to see you again?” > > A person’s feelings are subjective, yes, but they are valid. Depends on what you mean by “valid.” Another person telling you “I will never forgive you and never want to see you again” is definitely relevant to your relationship with that person, but it might not be relevant to the state of your soul or conscience. What if they were saying that to you because you had made an innocent mistake, or because you had done the right thing but it was something they didn’t like? Their failing to “forgive” you shouldn’t be counted against you. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/73 "2015-11-11T17:32:45Z")
It’s not just about forgiveness – it’s about remorse. If you don’t really regret what you did, and you’re only going to confession for the sake of doing so, it’s pretty meaningless. That’s what’s what penance is. If the offended party doesn’t forgive you, there’s nothing you can do about it. I can still regret what I did. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/74 "2015-11-11T19:31:31Z")
I was raised Christian myself — Protestant, Methodist to be precise about it. Don’t know how other kids reacted to it; I can only speak from my own experiences. First, it was emphasized more than anything else that Jesus was God and he had powers like being able to raise other people from the dead and do miracles and stuff. And long before I had a coherent understanding of what they meant by “crucified” it had been explained over and over and over again that he rose from the dead and was just fine subsequent to the experience. But be that as it may, by the end of elementary school I had sorted out that he had told people to be nice to each other, to forgive and share and not be judgmental and not act like you’ve got some kind of infallible righteousness when dealing with other people, and then he got nailed up to a cross, which killed him, and that it would be a seriously fucking horrible way to die, “and then he rose from the dead”. Oh, and that a big part of Christian attitude of reverence to the event was a sort of horror that we, collectively speaking, had done this incredibly shitty thing to someone who had been trying to get us to play nice with each other. I soon drew the conclusion that whatever-the-hell it meant for him to have “risen from the dead” subsequently, the meaning of that did not take away from the fact that yeah, we (people) killed him; I came to see it as intellectually and emotionally cowardly to pretend that somehow it did not count as a horrible deed because, well, after all, he “rose from the dead”. Then in junior high I was exposed to people who (to _my_ horror) thought it was jolly good and wonderful that he’d been nailed to the cross. Because somehow it was necessary that this happen or else God could not forgive us for our sins. That this sacrifice was necessary, worthy is the lamb who was slain and all that shit. “But that makes no fucking sense”, I said, “if Jesus is God… you’re telling me that God made a rule that said that in order for God to forgive us for ‘original sin’, God had to become Jesus and get hisself killed?” And I found the idea of Jesus as some kind of wind-up toy, a Messiah-ton “sent” down to get nailed up, was really creepy. And over all of it was the way that emphasizing this life-after-death stuff totally detracted from the message he’d brought to us, about sharing and caring and forgiving and not judging. As far as I was concerned that was the important part, that plus the realization that we were so fucked up that when someone told us we should live that way our reaction was to find some bullshit excuse to kill him. Yet later I learned that there were all kinds of complexities involved to explain just why (in down to earth political and social terms) he had been killed, many of which are not emphasized in the Bible and even less so by our sunday school teachers. And that crucifixion was a fairly standard punishment of the day. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2015, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/75 "2015-11-11T22:08:25Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > A person’s feelings are subjective, yes, but they are valid. I can’t imagine leaving someone wronged and after a nice confession think that I’m back on God’s good side. Excellent. Before or after Confession, go seek forgiveness from the person too, and you will be all set. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014/76 "2015-11-12T00:18:43Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > How do young Christians react when they first see or experience the story of the Crucifixion? I know I would be a little scared of or freaked out by any depiction of a torturous or agonizing death if I were a child. Or does religion make Jesus’ death more palatable for some reason? I’m Jewish, so I have no idea about this. Why don’t children run away screaming when they are exposed to Jesus’ bloody and gruesome fate? Why don’t Jewish children run away screaming when they are exposed to the baby-killing God of the Hebrew Bible? For that matter, why don’t Jewish adults run away screaming when they read Deut 28? [QUOTE=Moses] 15 But if you do not obey the LORD your God to observe faithfully all His commandments and laws which I enjoin upon you this day, all these curses shall come upon you and take effect: 16 Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country. 17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 Cursed shall be the issue of your womb and the produce of your soil, the calving of your herd and the lambing of your flock. 19 Cursed shall you be in your comings and cursed shall you be in your goings. 20 The LoRD will let loose against you calamity, panic, and frustration in all the enterprises you undertake, so that you shall soon be utterly wiped out because of your evil doing in forsaking Me. 21 The LoRD will make pestilence cling to you, until He has put an end to you in the land that you are entering to possess. 22 The LoRD will strike you with •consumption, fever, and inflammation, with scorch ing heat and drought, with blight and mildew; they shall hound you until you perish. 23 The skies above your head shall be copper and the earth under you iron. 24 The LoRD will make the rain of your land dust, and sand shall drop on you from the sky, until you are wiped out. 25 The LoRD will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many b roads; and you shall become a hor ror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your carcasses shall become food for all the birds of the sky and all the beasts of the earth, with none to frighten them off. 27 The LORD will strike you with the Egyptian inflam mation, with hemorrhoids, boil-scars, and itch, from which you shall never recover. [/QUOTE] That’s probably about as much as I can quote under fair use, but it goes on, and gets worse. It says that things will get so bad that the most delicate woman will eat her newborn child and its afterbirth in secret, so she won’t have to share them with her husband. That’s the punishment for not obeying every law in the Torah, including those that sophisticated Christians and Jews like to pretend aren’t there, e.g. making premarital sex and gay sex capital crimes, or executing a rape victim under certain circumstances (like being inside the city limits). If you’re an observant Jew, you have to read Deuteronomy at least three times a year, so you can’t claim ignorance of it, like a Christian would. So, OP, the answer to your question is that when children are indoctrinated with religion, they are taught to believe that what they are reading or hearing is wonderful, and apparently that sticks with them, even after they’re old enough to understand the implications. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/crucifixion-of-christ-for-kids/737014.md?page=3)