Good Friday , Happy Easter 2007

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Bible, Revelation xxii. 13.

My Easter message
Andrew Bolt
April 06, 2007 12:00am
Article from: HeraldSun

Andrew Bolt writes: I thank a preacher of astonishing moral clarity and courage, who inspired a faith that has brought us unparalleled gifts.

MOCKING Christ has not, in years, seemed this childish – even cowardly. And no, I'm not a Christian.

Of course, this being Easter, Christianity's most holy festival, we've seen some of the usual tributes of disrespect from the cultural elite.

While the ABC refused to show the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, for fear of God knows what mayhem, it had no such fear this week of mocking Jesus, whose crucifixion is remembered today.

Its Triple J station held "Jesus, you've got talent!" – a talent quest for singing toga wearers and the like, (and did so without the protection of one policeman).

Chicago's School of Art Institute, meanwhile, displayed an art work showing Christ resurrected as Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, son of a Muslim-born Kenyan.

And New York's Lab Gallery unveiled a life-sized Jesus made of chocolate, anatomically accurate right down to his bared penis.

I know, it's tame stuff given what we've seen before.

Who can forget Piss Christ, the crucifix plopped in a jar of urine at the National Gallery of Victoria?

Or the Chris Ofili picture of the Virgin Mary, decorated with cow dung, which the National Gallery of Australia tried to bring in?

Or the ABC's Christmas special of 1999 – a comparison of the Sistine Chapel's religious frescoes with the paintings made by hip British artists Gilbert and George of their semen, faeces, spit and blood?

But all these are just accent points of an elite culture that slurs Christians so naturally that The Age blithely ran opinion pieces last month with yet more priest-baiting lines, such as these:

"Being Catholic, the '70s meant rock masses, liturgical dancing and clapping to Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham until you lost all will to live. When you heard the word `priest' you didn't immediately think `child molester' – you thought of that guy with sideburns and shocking breath who played the guitar badly and wanted to be `down with the youth' . . .

"(W)e'd watch Mass for You at Home: just as soul-destroying and mind-numbing as the real thing, but it took half the time and you didn't have to shake hands with that weird guy with the eczema."

Ask any Christian politician how hard it is now, given the Gulf Stream of anti-Christian bigotry, to discuss moral issues in the media.

Their opinions will be dismissed as the he-would-say-that prattlings of a Vatican parrot or of a nice-but zealot.

Ask Tony Abbott, the Health Minister and a Catholic, whose reasoned arguments on an abortion pill were sniggered away by a slogan on a gloating Greens senator's T-shirt: "Get your rosaries off my ovaries."

YET it seems the cheap-shot sneers of intolerant atheists are fewer this year. More muted. And the squawks we still hear seem more contemptible.

It would be no wonder. I wouldn't be alone in thinking each time an artist or commentator insults Christians: friend, if you're so brave, say that about Islam.

Show us your chocolate Mohammeds. Show us your Korans dipped in urine.
Where is the singer who will rip up a Koran as Marilyn Manson ripped up a Bible? Or will on television tear up a picture of Islam's most honoured preacher as Sinead O'Connor shredded one of the great Pope John Paul II?

It's not as if Islam doesn't threaten our artists more than does Christianity.

See only the murder of film director Theo van Gogh or the fatwa on writer Salman Rushdie or the stabbing of Rushdie's translator. Or see those deadly riots against the Mohammed cartoons.

So when I see a Western artist mock Christ, I see an artist advertising not his courage but his cowardice – by not daring to mock what would threaten him more.
I am most certainly not saying that moderate Islam should now be treated with the childish disrespect so often shown to Christianity.

Nor am I saying most Muslims endorse violence, or that there aren't a few Christians who might turn violent, too.

After all, the chocolate Jesus has been removed from display when Lab Gallery's boss was bombarded with complaints and even – he claims – threats.

But I am saying that more people now know there is a double standard here illustrated perfectly by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which banned acts that told jokes against Muslims but promoted ones that lampooned Christians.

It's this blatant double standard that may finally have shamed some of the usual jeerers into showing Christianity a little respect.

And perhaps – just perhaps – more of us might be wakening to a truth we too long took for granted. It's no accident that we feel safer insulting Christians than trashing almost anyone else.

This is a religion that's always preached tolerance, reason and non-violence, even if too many of its followers have seemed deaf.

It's also urged us to leave the judgment of others to God (a message I ignore for professional reasons). We are the beneficiaries of that preaching, even those of us who aren't Christians.

We live in a society, founded on Christian principles, that guards our right to speak, and even to abuse things we should praise.

We can now vilify Jesus and damn priests, and risk nothing but hard looks from a soft bishop, and a job offer from The Age.

We dare all that because we do not actually fear what we condemn. We know Christians are taught not to punch our smarmy face, and we even count on it. Indeed, it is the very faith we mock that has made us so safe.

This is one reason why I, an agnostic, will today do what I do every Easter, and play Bach's divine St Matthew Passion while I sit for a while and give thanks.

I will be thanking again not only a preacher of astonishing moral clarity and courage, but one who inspired a faith that has brought us unparalleled gifts – including the freedom to create even a chocolate Jesus in this most holy of weeks.

Read more from Andrew on blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt.