Skip to main content

Behold the man

Pilate and Jesus, a painting by James Tissot, 19th century French painter


When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” [Bible – John 19:5]

One of the most poignant passages I came across recently is the following.

Those who wounded us were not superior, impressive beings who knew our special weaknesses and justly targeted them. They were themselves highly frantic, damaged creatures trying their best to cope with the litany of private sorrows to which every life condemns us.

The lines belong to a book titled The School of Life: An emotional education co-authored by 20-odd writers. I stopped reading the book after reading those lines. I was struck by a lot of thoughts. An image rose from the depth of my consciousness. It was the image of Jesus standing mangled before a hostile mob that bayed for his blood. The same people who had flocked to him for his miracles primarily and for his counsels secondarily, the same people who had called him Master and Lord, now wanted to see him crucified.

Pilate, the Governor of the Roman Empire in Judaea, knew that the fickle-minded people had been manipulated into this by some vested interests, the Jewish priests. Pilate had no grudge against Jesus. But he had his own political interests. He could not afford to displease Caesar with a mob riot in his province. So he ordered Jesus to be whipped.

The Roman soldiers had their bit of fun. They did not stop with whipping. They put a crown of thorns on Jesus’ head to mock him. King of Jews, wasn’t he? Didn’t he claim to be, at least? Did he? Well, the answers didn’t matter really. Soldiers love fun of this sort. There is a sadist within every soldier.

The soldiers had stripped Jesus before whipping him. Now they gave him an old purple robe to put on. Purple is the royal colour and the king of the Jews deserved it. The mockery was as total as it was brutal.

Then they brought this king to Pilate. Pilate presented him to the frenzied mob and said, “Behold the man!”

Pilate was appealing to the normal human sentiments. But lynch mobs do not possess normal sentiments. They are driven by pious sentiments like nationalism and patriotism.

A philosopher and mystic whose soul failed to appreciate the vulgar delights of the body was nailed to a cross by a crowd of people that thought themselves as “superior, impressive beings”.

That was the image, or series of images, which put an end to my reading of the book mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Unless you are a through and through conformist, you must have gone through many a crucifixion. People love to do that. To create an enemy and then vanquish the enemy as brutally as possible.

Is it brutality or is it a normal human weakness? That is what the book made me ponder on.

Some of the writers of this book are psychologists. The author of this particular chapter must be one of those shrinks who counselled quite many odd souls who struggled to toe the lines drawn by lynch-mobs. A couple of pages before the passage quoted above, the writer says that psychotherapy is not going to forge absolute happiness for anyone. You will remain “still – quite often – unhappy” after your therapy. You will continue to be misunderstood. You will continue to meet with opposition. People who don’t deserve will continue to mount high positions and arouse your jealousy or indignation. People will continue to judge you mercilessly. And the same people who clamour for your blood on Saturday evening will stand on a church pulpit on Sunday morning and preach to the faithful about the quintessential Christian virtue of compassion.

That’s how life is. That’s how it ever was and will be.

Your choice can be compassion. Your choice can make you a better human being. Remember that those who bay for your blood are also damaged people. Damaged by parents, society, religion, whatever. They need the blood of the sacrificial lamb to sate the thirst of their parched souls.

PS. My latest e-book, Coping with Suffering, is available at Amazon.



Comments

  1. magiceyeJune 8, 2020 at 6:45 PM

    Beautiful painting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sonia DograJune 8, 2020 at 8:52 PM

    You are a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. It is a pleasure to read you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJune 8, 2020 at 10:57 PM

    It is sad. There is enough misery in the world and to top that, there are those who love to create more misery for themselves and those around them. I feel it's the greatest misfortune, to 'create' suffering. Thought provoking article.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 9, 2020 at 6:39 AM

      Unless people choose to raise their consciousness levels, more and more misery will be added to life.

      Delete
  4. Chetan MaheshwariJune 9, 2020 at 2:29 PM

    A good point, and added some points for me to think and reflect

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...
13 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more