 Last Sunday, my wife and I attended an Anglican church service in Bergen, Norway. It reminded me of my childhood church, because the service was vacuous, anti-intellectual, and a complete waste of time. However, I'm very glad we went because it sparked some valuable thoughts about Christianity. The building itself that we were in was historic, dating back to the 12th century. It's called St. Mary's Church. It is beautiful on the inside. Being in the middle of the sanctuary is a life-size replica of the crucifixion of Jesus. I've never seen anything like it in my life. It was huge and disturbing, but my eyes kept coming back to it, probably because the actual church service was so boring. Growing up in the Christian evangelical world, I've seen many crosses in my lifetime, but never one so realistic. As I stared, it hit me. The crucification is profound. Never mind any of the theological claims. Purely philosophically, it is a powerful story. I see two central concepts packed into the crucifixion, the Christian conception of love and their pessimistic view of human beings. From the start, you'll have to forgive my ignorance. I don't fully understand the significance of the crucifixion in mainstream Christianity. I've heard the arguments a thousand times, but I don't grasp them, so I can't say whether my analysis is heretical or orthodox. But to me, the crucifixion is a demonstration of philosophy. The ideas are shown, not spoken. It's a demonstration of love, a demonstration of hate, and a demonstration of commitment. As I've written about before, love is a mindset and it radically reorders your values. Instead of first desiring your own well-being, you first desire the well-being of another, then at the expense of yourself. In my case, the only person I feel like I've ever loved is my wife. An experiencing love for her was life-changing. The person of Jesus takes this conception of love to the extreme. He doesn't say love your wife and your family. He says love your neighbor, love your enemy, love everybody without exception. In other words, value others as highly as you value yourself, even at your own expense. Which is a radical or impossible idea. So a unique part of this story is Jesus' commitment to love. Taken to its logical end, his argument implies, be willing to die for strangers that hate you. According to the canonical story, he wasn't hypocritical about this either. He actually died for strangers that hated him. It wasn't a glamourous death either. He was mocked, tortured, and executed. And this is where the replica affected me. Most people don't see a crucifixion and think, oh, now that's love. But given my prior experiences, that's actually what I thought. In the extreme loving state of mind, I would do anything for my wife, Julia. I would even be willing to be crucified. That intensity of love can only be understood once you've experienced it yourself. From the outside, I'm sure it looks and sounds like insanity. What also struck me is the physical position of the crucified body. It's in a state of total openness and frailty. The arms are spread wide, unable to cover or defend itself. It's a humiliating position, completely vulnerable, without even the ability to protect itself. And this too reminds me of the loving state of mind. You have to be 100% honest and real with your partner. That means being completely vulnerable to the point of heartbreak or worse. When you reach that point, you aren't in control of what happens. It's as if your hands are physically nailed apart and you cannot shield your heart from the other person. And my analysis, love is one half of the crucifixion, and hate is the other half. Christians tend to have a grim conception of what they call the world, in other words human beings in their default state, where hatred plays a central role in the human psyche. Left to their own devices, humans are selfish, greedy, and barbaric hypocrites who aggressively reject the philosophy and mindset of love. So this is where you get the central juxtaposition. You have Jesus arguing for the most extreme, radical, and peaceful love, and he's in the process of being crucified, mocked, spit upon, and hated by the world. So in the crucifixion, you have love and hate, unified by the same act. To the Christian, the world can tolerate liars and murderers, but it cannot tolerate true love. Again, the physical position of the crucified body strikes me as poignant. It's meant to mock and torture. Humans are essentially saying, oh yeah, love is so great. Has it working for you up there, buddy? The implicit presupposition being, well, if a philosophy is correct, it will result in happiness, wealth, and respect. And since Jesus' philosophy demonstratively led to his own pain, humiliation, and death, and derision, it must therefore be wrong. I don't know if your average Christian would agree with my analysis, but it seems like the most charitable understanding of the crucifixion without including any theology. While I am sympathetic to the Christian conception of love based on my own experiences, I remain undecided about the perspective of human nature in general. Were human beings really so bad? I don't know, though I admit, every week I grow more pessimistic. From my own experience, love does seem to polarize people. I've been mocked by those who think I'm naive and deluded, and I expect a few people would be very thrilled to learn if I got divorced, I fell out of love, or I was even killed. As I investigate different religions, one thing is clear. Their philosophical and ethical claims can be evaluated without any need for any theology or dachma. The crucifixion of Jesus is profound whether you think it's a historical event, a supernatural event, or simply a metaphor.