Warning – Contains Cruelty to Religious Images
I killed a crucifix today. It isn’t that I am anti-crucifix, or anti-religious images generally. I don’t venerate them, as though images of the sacred were themselves part of God (except to the extent that God is everywhere), but if they help people in praying, I’ve got nothing against that. This crucifix, however, wasn’t calculated to inspire devotion to Jesus’s love, or grief at his suffering, or anything much else. It was a tiny, battered old pendant which PDB11 and I found in a box of bits and pieces of costume jewellery. Its face and features were worn away to nothing, if it had ever had any. On the other hand – well, it was a symbol of something important: a reminder that Jesus loved us enough to die to save us. We didn’t particularly want to keep it, but letting it be melted down as scrap metal seemed disrespectful. PDB11 suggested that it might be best to cremate it on the Easter bonfire. That way, a depiction of death died as we celebrated Jesus’s victory