2,000 Year Update: Do We Still Need Jesus?

Trekking through the Italian village of San Giorgio, I was welcomed by colorful houses against the backdrop of roving mountains, smells of gnocchi and wine wafting through kitchen windows where laundry hung, and red-tiled roofs sheltering a cross and a hanging Christ all along the cobblestoned way.

Some of these crosses were a gruesome sight, with Jesus’s open wounds festering, his face in utter agony. In some, creatures even pecked at him. The contrast was almost spooky—this beautiful, quaint scenery sprinkled with graphic homages to a dying man. I respected the deep reverence for Jesus that was so vivid in this small Catholic town, but I wondered why he was depicted in such a suffering, sometimes frightful, light—why his death was more iconic than his life. An unsettling feeling came over me, and I stopped to think, “Why is Jesus’s death so celebrated anyway?”

When people talk about Jesus’s death today, it’s often with an automatic reverence. “Let’s give thanks to our Lord and Savior, who died for our sins and forgave us all.” But do we ever stop and think about how God feels about Jesus, then and now? I wondered if, to God, these last thousands of years were just a speck in the history of the universe, with the death of Jesus and the sad condition of humanity today still very close to His heart. While Christianity has been able to find the silver lining to Jesus's death over the generations, what does God see? Isn't there still violence, death, abuse and misuse of love in the world? Do we still need Jesus? Are we really saved from sin?