What would be the primary symbol of christianity, if Jesus had been born and executed in modern times, and not during the era of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago?

The electric chair, or maybe just the on/off switch

I have days when I would gladly strangle him with my bare hands myself.

A syringe, maybe.

Ku Klux Clan hood and robe.

Maybe a red MAGA trucker hat and a burning cross on the front yard.

After a brief search of how they do it in the ME, I noticed some countries still use crucifixion.
Firing squads, stoning, and hanging seem to be widely used.
Decapitation by sword is still a thing.

I think a modern Jesus would likely be killed the same as any other “blasphemous” people.

Regardless of how he is killed, it pales in comparison to how many many people suffer. Ironically, many die begging for their God to help.

Crucifixion was the quick way out. Let’s see how Jesus would handle his first round of chemotherapy, following invasive surgery.

Thanks, everyone, for assuming that Jesus would have ever had similar values with magas, or that all Christians must be right wing. (Being sarcastic here, in case you can’t tell.)

A close friend of mine said years ago, if Jesus had been killed by a bullet, the Christians would be wearing a bullet pendant around their neck.

She makes a good point. It has always been odd to me that Christians wear and have on walls and statues around their homes the cross, which was a painful and horrid death for anyone nailed to one. The cross alone I thought was pretty when I was younger, before I knew why a cross. It’s still pretty if you forget the imagery of the horror of it.

Lenny Bruce used to say Christians would wear little electric chairs.

@JLeslie it’s because of what it symbolizes. Jesus died on the cross to save all sinners. So it’s a symbol of the great sacrifice he made because he loved us so much.

The symbol might be the sun. Or the Earth from space.

@LifeQuestioner I know. Hence the bullet if he had been shot to death.

The cross is pretty, as I said, but sometimes the cross is shown with Jesus pinned to it, and I just am not one to like to see suffering and I don’t feel good when I hear stories of martyrdom and such extreme sacrifice.

At the same time, I can appreciate when people risk themselves for a cause, but the Jesus story is a tough one for me. God has to promote himself through suffering? Forcing a young woman through pregnancy, labor, and birth (sound familiar) letting his son be tortured? People honoring life sacrifice and looking forward to life after death. Good message to get people to enlist in the army. Useful message to keep people in their place who live in bad conditions.

I know Christianity also promotes peace and helping each other, I’m just saying the main symbol for the religion is where Christ was tortured and killed.

How is that explained to a five year old? “Mommy, why is that man on the cross?” They nailed through his hands and let him hang there in the heat of the sun until he died. That sounds to me like R rated for violence. Maybe people don’t explain it to 5 year olds. I know when I was a kid I had no idea about the Jesus story, to me the cross was just a symbol of being a Christian. As far as I knew it was randomly selected and just caught on. Maybe for young Christian children it’s the same, I really have no idea when they are told the story and if it is doled out in age appropriate description.

@JLeslie it is watered down for young kids, trust me. The whole idea in the Old Testament with the Jewish people is that when they had sinned, they needed to make a sacrifice to atone for their sin, but this was something they would have to do every time they sinned. But in the New Testament, Jesus became the perfect sacrifice so that we no longer had to do that. By the way, if you read the Bible, Mary was happy to be the mother of Jesus. And her conception was not forced on her. It was not a rape. It was through the Holy Spirit and it was not a physical thing but rather a spiritual thing, even though she did physically have a baby like women do.

I don’t carry around a cross with Jesus pinned on it, I think that’s more of a Catholic thing maybe. But we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, so having representations of him on the cross is silly at this point because he’s no longer on the cross. Yes, his death was horrible, but he went through that for us, so that we no longer had to be slaves to sin. Because of Adam and Eve first sinning, man was living under the curse of not being able to earn his salvation because none of us are perfect. All of us have sinned. It was only through Christ dying for us that we were able to get out from under the bondage of sin. So the symbol of the cross to us is not a symbol of torture and death. But it is a reminder of the ultimate sacrifice that Christ willingly made in order to save us. It is a symbol of his love for us that he would do that. Imagine never having sinned and yet he died so that those of us who have sinned would be saved. I understand why you find that horrific, but it’s pretty amazing that he was willing to do that.

This is a poor example, but imagine a fireman going into a house to save people that he doesn’t even know. And maybe he ultimately dies in the process of saving the people. You wouldn’t say that’s horrific, would you? You would think that that man must have a lot of love for people in general to be willing to do that sort of thing. I can’t make you understand, but I hope something of what I said makes it makes it more sense to you.

THIS
Let us Pray!

@LifeQuestioner I didn’t say Mary was raped. Although, at that time in history she would have been disgraced or worse if she had willingly had sex.

I’m Jewish, but I honestly have no idea Jews were doing sacrifices? Obviously, that is not done now. As far as sins, we first apologize to the person we harmed and then we ask God to forgive us. Erev Yom Kippur (the night before Yom Kippur the day of atonement) is the biggest symbolic time to go to the people we want to sincerely apologize to and repair relationships.

I’m not religious. All I know is in Judaism we are taught to be good, to help each other, and the major focus is on life not the after life. In my mind we please God by good behavior not by worshipping him, and we don’t believe Jesus was the messiah, because the messiah was supposed to bring on a great time of peace. I guess if we eventually get to peace in the world people will argue Jesus originally put things in motion for it, but from my view it is taking a really long time. Moreover, anyone can go to “heaven” they don’t have to be Jewish, because what is important is good behavior. I don’t need to change your relationship with God as a Christian, that is yours. I don’t need to convert you to save you, if you are good you will join God in the afterlife. We are all God’s children.

The fireman story hurts my heart. I value his willingness to risk his life for others, I realize that could be me in the burning building, but I hate that he died.

@JLeslie sorry, it was the use of your word “forcing” that made me think you were implying rape. Not too long ago I was having this conversation with somebody on Twitter, and they kept insisting that the Holy Spirit had raped Mary. And I guess I had that in the back of my mind when I was reading what you said but I’m sorry if I misinterpreted it.

It’s true that the Jewish people do not make sacrifices today, but if you read the Old Testament, that’s what the Jewish law in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, calls for them to do. It’s an interesting read, but it can be dry in spots as it goes into great detail of what they are to bring for a sin atonement, for a peace offering, etc. but the idea was that once Jesus died, there was no more need for that sacrifice. Which makes it interesting to me that although the Jewish people do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, sometime not long after that, they stopped making sacrifices.

And yes, we Christians believe that we should go to others and reconcile with them when we have done them wrong, although hopefully more in the moment and not just once a year. And I don’t mean to say that that’s the only time you all do that, but we don’t have a holiday commemorating that in particularly.

But we also believe that you cannot earn your salvation by doing good works. Because we have all sinned, nothing we can do is good enough to earn salvation. So that the whole idea is that one had to come who was perfect, Jesus Christ, who would make the ultimate sacrifice so that we did not have to die for our sins.

I know it sounds horrific, and if I may use yet another imperfect example, how would you react if you and your mother were in some horrible situation where you were told that your mother was going to have to die unless you were willing to die in her place? Yes, it’s horrible to contemplate, and I guess everybody’s response would be different. My mother is no longer living on Earth, (I do believe that she is in heaven now!) , but I know that when she was here on earth, if I had been faced with that situation, I would have happily laid down my life for her because of the great love I felt for her. So I use this example to show you that that is the same love that Jesus felt for us, that he was willing to lay down his life to save us. And yes, it is sometimes overwhelming to think of what he went through for me, for you, for everybody. But that’s how great his love is.

If you’re interested, do go back and read in the Old Testament about the sacrifices. It will quickly come to your attention that these sacrifices had to be perfect and without blemish. They couldn’t bring a sheep or a calf to be sacrificed that was injured or had some other imperfection. That points to the later sacrifice of Jesus, who was the only man, God come to Earth, who was perfect in every way. It couldn’t have been anybody else because we have all sinned. It had to be a perfect sacrifice.

^^Jews aren’t saying Jesus didn’t exist. Jews can believe Jesus had a good message of kindness but he just doesn’t fulfill everything needed to be called the messiah. So, in my mind if he was one of the catalysts to stop sacrifices that seems like a good thing to me.

Most Jews seem ok with evolving as we understand the world more and become more civilized and more understanding of science and physics and psyche.

The Golden Arches. HA!

Whatever the symbol for Twitter was

@JLeslie yes, I understand that Jewish people know that Jesus existed. I’m not sure why they don’t accept him as Messiah based on how many Old Testament scriptures point forward to his coming. I know back then, he was not accepted because the expectation was that when the Messiah came, he would overthrow the Roman government. But Jesus didn’t come to establish a kingdom on earth, which unfortunately, there are some people today trying to make America into a Christian nation, which goes against everything that Christ came for. But I don’t want to get off on that topic.

I’m glad you responded again because I had meant to address something you said about peace earlier. Granted, I can only testify to what Christ has done in my life, but as I said in the first paragraph, Jesus did not come to bring peace on the earth. There will be peace when he comes again the final time, but in the meanwhile, the world is still plagued by sin. Which is why we still have diseases, wars, crime, etc. But in the meanwhile, for those who accept him as their Savior, we have a peace that surpasses all understanding. So, all kinds of things can be going on around us, and yet as Christians, we can have an inner peace that goes beyond any of that. It’s because we know that God is in control and that no matter what, we look forward to that day of his return when we will have eternal life.

Getting back to me personally, I have shared on here to some degree the health issues I have. I have stage four kidney disease, diabetes, and all the other lovely conditions that come with having diabetes. I don’t know how soon I might have to go on dialysis. The life expectancy once a person does go on dialysis can be anywhere from 2 years to 20 years. And I am only in my early fifties. I don’t know how I would be able to wrap my head around that fact if I didn’t know that all this is temporary. I have the hope and faith of eternal life, and so despite all that, I can have peace because I know what awaits me.

@LifeQuestioner
From what I read years ago, it is because they expect the messiah to be just a normal human, not the son of god. He is supposed to be a great military leader, and is supposed to achieve all his goals in one life time. There is no “second coming”.

@JLeslie ” Maybe people don’t explain it to 5 year olds.”

Try 3 year olds. I was indoctrinated into Catholicism from around that age, and they do indeed explain all the morbid details of the crucifixion. In retrospect, I get the sense that they revelled in traumatising and scaring us with it. And it absolutely was traumatising.

“it is watered down for young kids, trust me”

Maybe some do, a lot don’t.

@ragingloli thanks! I was not aware of that.

@Kropotkin sorry, I was speaking from experience with the churches I’ve been a member at. I know years ago there was a lady who had her young daughter going to a church school kind of thing. The daughter was traumatized because they told all of these young kids at 4 years old that if they didn’t accept Jesus, they were going to burn in hell for all eternity. The school was not Catholic, by the way. She pulled her daughter out of that school so quickly. So in some circles, sad to say, it does happen. I know when I was that age or even older for awhile, we didn’t learn about all that. Not until at least we were teenagers and were more mature and able to handle it. And even then it wouldn’t have been real graphic.

Assuming he lived in Europe in World War 2, and since he’d be Jewish and gassed or shot. So I’m going to say a gas chamber or a gun.

@LifeQuestioner Jesus brought a good message and had good values, but he didn’t complete, or I should say accomplish, the redemption of the world. He did not bring on the messianic era, a great time of peace. Judaism doesn’t give two chances.

There are other reasons why Jesus isn’t considered to be the messiah in Judaism, I don’t know them all.

@Caravanfan Good point.