Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Jesus Christ had not been nailed to the Cross?!
I mean has anyone considered the potential ramifications of our Lord’s stepping out of this world, and leading us into the next?!
Because the more one thinks about it, the more likely one finds out how History would have taken a very different course from the current one. And it boggles the mind. I mean it really does.
If Pilate of Pont would have chosen to punish Barabbas instead of Jesus, that means at the very least our Lord and Savior would have not become the inception point of a new faith. It also means He wouldn’t have gathered such a numerical mass of believers, and would not have been able to start a new Religion. No critical mass, no Lord, you see.
For if one considers how many false prophets before and since had / have tried to do what Jesus did, then one would discover that 99.99% of world’s prophets not only failed to kickstart their spiritual movements. They also died abandoned by the people, and forgotten by History.
If Jesus had lived past the age of 33, even if he had died subsequently, perhaps even violently and at the hands of the State, his followers would not have been able to promote his or their message, his reasoning, well, their reasonings, and eventually the whole movement would have taken its natural course, down the drain of recorded history.
It is not just the time of His passing, but also how He expired, and returned among the living, and how His fellows aspired to take His message to the four corners of the Earth. But everything that happened with Christianity, as well as the Butterfly effect or ramifications on other religions, and geopolitics, in the coming centuries and millennia, everything can be traced back to one singular moment in space and time: that hill on the Golgotha, where He died for the sins of Humanity, for our sins.
The impact of His footprint is measured in tens of thousands of years. It is even now reverberating through our 21st century geopolitics, just like the ripples made by an planet-sized asteroid into a giant planet primordial ocean.
In the end, what we do in life does echo in eternity, as Russell Crowe so eloquently put it in the Riddley Scott’s Gladiator (2002).
But I do subscribe to this point of view. I do so wholeheartedly and with every fiber of my being. I am penetrated by the very meaning of these words.
Why do I say this? Because I believe in two things, as ineluctably as one can ever believe anything in this unfathomable world of ours that Marcus Aurelius so aptly described some 1850 years ago.
I believe in the legacy of my loins. I believe that when I am gone, and my body’s turned to dust, my offspring will remember me by some small token and that some of my words will make it after I’m gone from this realm, even in a truncated and deformed way.
I also believe that I must hedge my bets. So, I write. I write not just for us, my friends. I do so with a firm conscience that even though my words will make some impression during my erstwhile passage on this planet, they will perhaps resonate and depict the state of our world, as I perceive it, to some later denizen of the same. I write because this way I can leave something behind, when all is said and done.
Because, you see, the meaning of our lives is the single most common denominator we all share. We all want the same thing. Not all of us say it out loud and that’s a pity, because we should, really. False modesty doesn’t sit well with anyone. Not when the majority of the world believe they deserve more than they have. And it’s something that again we all share. Before we are saints, we are all mighty sinners.
But this is neither here nor there, so I shall return to my original train of thought. I shall show you exactly how we go about trying to leave a footprint as grand as Jesus Christ’s on this world of ours. And this will shock you, folks, but that is exactly how we operate. In our search for something long-lasting, that will endure and make future generations gawk in awe at our names, we struggle, we push and we shove one another. We go about it with such a violence that future generations will either study it for its raw brutality, and try to avoid it, or if we are unlucky, they will try and emulate our pathos.
In any event, the things we do in order to achieve immortality confirm our innate amoral nature. We, as a species, are more inclined to ask for forgiveness after committing a Sin, then we are to ask for permission beforehand. We are sneaky bastards, ladies and gentlemen, sneaky bastards. And this is both a blessing, for it gave us a distinct survival edge, but also a curse, because one’s success is predicated on another’s failure.
All mountain tops are made up of the skeletons of many who have attempted the trek but perished along the way.
Götterdämmerung 