Good Friday Thoughts

Good Friday is a day of extreme contrast. Horrible cruelty was carried out against an innocent man. He was betrayed, beaten, belittled, and finally executed in a dehumanizing, cruel and painful, and humiliating way. Yet we Christians call it “Good.” It’s not good because of the actions done by humanity against Jesus. It is “Good” because of what Jesus accomplished that day — completely succumbing to it all, and yet…death did not get the final say.

I find myself drawn to Good Friday this year in a different way than prior years. In many ways I am struggling. I’m struggling with humanity and how absolutely cruel humanity can be. I am struggling with what seems like our bull headed insistence to do the absolute opposite of everything that Jesus called on his followers to do. Do we do this out of spite, arrogance, what? Do we do this to send a message to Jesus that he doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about? Are we really just a bunch of toddlers throwing a fit on the floor of the market demanding we get our way?

I struggle with humanity’s proclivity towards authoritarianism. Do we think that we’ll somehow be exempt from the cruelty and destruction that comes with all authoritarian systems? In what universe does any of this make any sense at all?

I struggle with humanity’s path of environmental destruction that seems to be bound to our endless capacity for toxic individualism. Do we really, honestly, believe that we are so separate from everything and everyone else that we can act and do whatever we want without any…