perfidy

Kathy Kinsley has found a story about a store in New York that's selling replicas of the nails used to crucify Jesus in that Mel Gibson movie that I keep hearing so much about. Her comment? "People are strange."

Indeed. I wonder who it is who's doing the buying? Is it Christians? Hipsters? Fashionistas? Punk rock refugees on a day-trip up from St. Mark's Place?

When I was in high school there were two disturbing trends in t-shirts. First was the Garth Brooks concert T, usually in size XXL with a giant airbrushed Garth on the front, tucked in and bloused, and worn with sausage-skin-tight acidwash jeans.

That was bad enough. But the ones that really made my day were the "Lord's Gym" T-Shirts, worn by students who belonged to certain evangelical and millenarian Protestant sects. Ever seen those shirts? With a dramatic side-lit image of a muscular Jesus, blood streaming from his scalp where the thorns have dug in, his face drawn in a rictus of agony and supreme effort as he attempts a push-up under the weight of the giant cross on his back? What the fuck? Celebrating, even exulting in, the suffering of Jesus? I mean, that's sort of part of Christian theology, since Jesus suffered and died for everyone and all that, but... what the fuck? I thought that was a matter for solemn pondering.

Then again, I totally don't get modern "Christian" music, either.

I wonder if the same people who wear the Lord's Gym shirts are the same people that buy a fake Jesus-hanger.