"Wäre Christus nicht beleidigt worden, gäbe es keine Erlösung."

Bei den ROFTERS, den "Readers of First Things" wirft man einen Blick auf den verspotteten HErrn - und die Lektion, die die Christen daraus lernen (sollten) und - ach so spät erst gelernt haben.

"The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise."