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 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...
17 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Book Review Title: The Blind Lady’s Descendants Author: Anees Salim Publisher: Penguin India 2015 Pages: 301 Price: Rs 399 A metaphorical blindness is part of most people’s lives.  We fail to see many things and hence live partial lives.  We make our lives as well as those of others miserable with our blindness.  Anees Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014 explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.  The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to the mother.  When Amar, the youngest son and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a few years after him though it did not survive.  Dark humour spills out of every page of the book.  For example: How reckless Akmal was! ...
5 comments
Read more

A Curious Case of Food

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...
6 comments
Read more