Supposing Jesus had walked the earth in the 20th Century, and had faced a firing squad for his execution, instead of being crucified.
Then the gun – instead of the cross – would be the Christian symbol. Churches would be having a machine gun placed prominently everywhere. Christians would hang pistols or revolvers around their necks.
Pastors and priests would often say such things as “Carry your own machine gun” or “Shoulder your own artillery” in church services. There would be mass shootings every Good Friday, especially in the Philippines.
When praying, instead of making the sign of the cross, Catholics would mime pointing an invisible pistol against their temples – ready to blow their brains out. The pope would regularly mime pointing a rifle at the huge congregations. Or an RPG launcher.
Cemeteries would be full of machine and sub-machine guns: Hotchkiss, LSATs, Ultimax, Bizon SMGs, Daewoos, and so on. Huge, rotary cannons would adorn churches spires – M61 Vulcans, GAU-Avengers, and the Gryazev Shipunovs.
Interestingly, all this would be considered normal… and pious. In fact, any criminal bearing a gun would be getting an initial benefit of doubt – he could be a devout Christian, after all. And so it would be, that occasionally, a gun-wielding robber would be proclaiming, loudly, thus:
“I’m not a Christian. I’m a heartless thief. Stick your hands up!”
Excellent! 🙂
LikeLike
Gracias, my friend.
LikeLike
Ahahaha that is a very interesting perspective, and a really entertaining one at that, especially when I imagine my very devout Catholic mother wearing a gun necklace :b
LikeLike
If Jesus had been shot down, your mom totally would have no qualms wearing a revolver around her neck. It would be so cute… and so disturbing, at the same time. But the society would allow it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Food for thought indeed! Especially how we rabidly absorb these symbols into our lives.
LikeLike
Evidently, the human mind is quite adept at absorbing the most outrageous ideas, and rationalizing them away. It’s a most interesting capability.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sweet irony!
LikeLike
Ha ha. Indeed, Robert. But imagine such a world. Imagine the pope carrying around a huge Uzi, and the crowd happily cheering him on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Real food for thought.
I wish we had them Christians here to tell us why this wouldn’t be the case
LikeLike
Some Christians have actually read this post, and then inboxed me through my email their opinions. According to them, it is not the cross that killed Jesus, but the nails. So I patiently explained to them that the cross COULD have killed Jesus, even without the nails, due to asphyxiation in that stretched out, unnatural posture. That shut them up.
LikeLike
Then they should be hanging nails not crosses as a symbol of their remembrance.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly.
LikeLike
I’ve always wondered about that asphyxiation claim. I can hold my arms out to my sides and/or above my head for quite a while and while my arms hurt, my breathing doesn’t change much. I’ve grabbed onto chairs and let myself hang and still nothing except the exertion of holding on.
I’m wondering how someone thinks that a nail in the wrist, hand or ankle/foot can kill? One might think that folks who think this would also think that a nose piercing would kill you.
LikeLike
Clubschadenfreude, the reason why you have been able to breath when suspending yourself is because you are able to pull yourself up slightly, and hence breath out. But if you are nailed by the wrist, pulling yourself up would cause a lot of pain, and you wouldn’t manage to breath out. Your extended rib cage would make your lungs to be persistently inflated, with no way of breathing out. In time, as the oxygen there is depleted, you would lose consciousness, and then die.
The same thing would happen if you were tied to a stake or a cross, instead of being nailed. Even then, you would end up being suspended for far longer than your capability to keep raising yourself slightly so as to exhale. And once you are too worn out to thus raise yourself, you will lose the capacity to breath out, and die, eventually.
Here’s a useful resource on the same:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/apr/08/thisweekssciencequestions
LikeLike
I think little silver bullets would make nice dangling earrings. 🙂
LikeLike
Nice! And lovers can have them inscribed with the others name on them! “This bullet is for you!”
LikeLike
A Bud and a Bullet 🙂 Nice
LikeLiked by 1 person
Happiness is a warm gun 🙂
LikeLike
That triggered a laugh and a 🙂 from me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha ha. It would be one weird world, in which each couple carries 2 to 4 bullets between them for each other. All fun and games until, one day, some idiot would come up with the idea of merchandizing live bullets as ornaments.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That would make for a brilliant short-film, ala Twilight Zone-type approach.
LikeLike
I probably should get script writers in on this idea, John. Ha ha. I’d watch the heck out of such a film.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very imaginative! Kudos!
LikeLike
Thank you, Exrelayman. 🙂 Thank you for passing by.
LikeLike
I’m all for having a Vulcan cannon on a steeple. Just think, how the sun would glint off the pile of brass spilling out of it. 🙂
LikeLike
Ha ha. It would be a brave new world, Clubschadenfreude. 🙂
LikeLike
heh, it just speaks to my attraction to hyperviolent things like Warhammer. 🙂
LikeLike
Then you would be right at home in such a world, my friend. You’d have the opportunity to act out your Warhammer fantasies in real life, every single day. 🙂
LikeLike
Whahahahaha! Excellent Joe! Made me think of this:
LikeLike
Ha ha. Thanks for the video clip, Sonel. Excellent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This was some random thing, and I thought I had random thoughts….you win. You should write a short story or a novel, forget about that you should make a movie around that subject. Probably piss some hardcore Christian people, (I´m a Christian by the way, but not a very good one it seems) but I guarantee that most people are no so uptight and sure will have a laugh at it.
Thanks for the morning smile after reading this, still pissed off that you are more random than me though.
LikeLike
Ha ha. Thanks for passing by, Charlypriest, and for your kind words. I’m glad that you found the post entertaining.
The idea of a book on this sort of a topic is something that has been simmering for a while now. I just might work upon it in the near future. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Although I have forsworn religious blogging this I had to comment on.
Truly brilliant!
The thought of a billion plus Catholics kissing a silver UZI on a chain while the Eastern Orthodox revere an AK47.
”Oh, Father bless these bullets, for I have sinned.”
LikeLike
Hey there, Arkenaten: thanks a lot for your words. And indeed, all those Catholics requesting blessings for their bullets and guns would be a sight to behold. 🙂
LikeLike