The Crucifixion- God’s Great Act of Self Harm?

These are thoughts in process and I realise their limitations. There are many reasons for and ways of self harming, but this piece cannot focus on them all. I have no in depth knowledge of the practice of corporal mortification, but the concept of it has triggered some of this thinking.
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What happens when we read the stories in the Bible without the trappings of all that Christianity has put on us and told us that they mean?

I believe that we begin to let the text speak into our lives in a far richer and fuller way than we could if we simply read it as familiar stories. An example is in the film ‘Amistad’ when a group of arrested and wrongfully enslaved and imprisoned black men are given a picture bible. They see pictures of Jesus and ascertain that he is some kind of saint. They then see his unfair imprisonment, unjust trial, and brutal death, and as they read it from their perspective, of being unfairly imprisoned and tried, with a death sentence hanging over them, they relate to the story and realise what Jesus means to them.

So how might a survivor of abuse and self harm read the story of the crucifixion? What would it look like to read the story with fresh eyes from that perspective?

Jesus went voluntarily to torture and death. He tells his disciples not defend him as he could ‘call down legions of angels’ if he wanted to. Jesus chose to go through this torturous pain and anguish. Jesus went through this ordeal to deal with sin and guilt in the world. Not his own sin and guilt but that of others. To deal with the sins that humanity would do to one another.

Historically Christian sects have practiced ‘corporal mortification’ in order to align themselves more fully with God. Dan Brown’s fiction book, ‘The Divinci Code’, while not a theological commentary or text, raised the profile of this practice. Is it to deny ourselves so as to follow Christ more? Is it to purge ourselves of guilt in order to gain closeness to God? Is it used to clear the conscience of the guilt stricken who has not lived up to the standards they see God or the church as requiring?

So what of people who self harm in contemporary society? There are numerous reasons, but they include dealing with guilt or pain, sometimes as a result of abuse. People may harm themselves in order to purge themselves of the constant feelings of shame, disgust and pain that are a result of the sin of others against them. They take on the guilt of their abuser, be this abuse physical, emotional, sexual, neglectful, deliberate or through ignorance, and they deal with this pain by harming themselves.

So we read about an innocent man deliberately allowing himself to be tortured and beaten, we look on the picture of the cross and see Jesus' blood running from brutal wounds, we realise all this was done to deal with the pain and guilt he has taken on from the misdeeds and mistakes of society to one another. Perhaps going through absolute physical agony was the only way he could express the internal pain that carrying the guilt of the world involved? Maybe we can see ourselves in him? See ourselves and our wounds where we had to cut so deep, to watch the blood flow, to express the pain or purge the shame? Maybe we can remember, that like us, Jesus had to deal with shame and guilt that were not his. Maybe we can see him standing alongside us in the journey that we must go through to healing. Maybe rather than seeing the image of God as one who expects us to be ‘good’ and punishes us if we are ‘bad’, we can see a different God. A God who understands that it was not our fault. A God who tells us it is not our guilt. A God who is committed to our healing and to raising us up?