A Filipino villager has been nailed to a wooden cross for the 35th time to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a brutal Good Friday tradition he said he would devote to pray for peace in Ukraine, Gaza and the disputed South China Sea.
On Friday, over a hundred people watched on as 10 devotees were nailed to wooden crosses, among them Ruben Enaje, a 63-year-old carpenter and sign painter. The real-life crucifixions have become an annual religious spectacle that draws tourists in three rural communities in Pampanga province, north of Manila.
The gory ritual resumed last year after a three-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic. It has turned Enaje into a village celebrity for his role as the “Christ” in the Lenten reenactment of the Way of the Cross.
Ahead of the crucifixions, Enaje told The Associated Press by telephone Thursday night that he has considered ending his annual religious penitence due to his age, but said he could not turn down requests from villagers for him to pray for sick relatives and all other kinds of maladies.
I almost feel bad for those ancient Hebrews. They were just trying to understand their world with very very imperfect tools to do so.
They “knew” that every tribe had its own protection god and they knew that they were different from the tribes around them. So they built a narrative to explain the facts of their existence. “We are different than our neighbors, therefore we must have came from some places else. Egypt is some place else”. “Other tribes eat pork and we don’t. It must be because our protective god doesn’t like it. How did he tell us? Well there must have been some time when he told one of us.” They kept on reasoning backwards, trying to find the effect from the causes.
I feel a lot less bad for people in modern times who take these bronze age ideas seriously.