It was my son who asked my opinion last Thursday night on the artwork of Mideo Cruz at the CCP.  He asked me what the phrase “offending religious feelings” meant.  I asked him why he wanted to know and he answered that it might be a topic to be discussed in current events or given as a theme to write on or to make a speech on in school.

I told him that “offending religious feelings” is a crime punished by the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines.  If any person enters a place of worship and does any act that offends religious feelings of the faithful, then, that person may be prosecuted for the crime of offending religious feelings.

My son was silent for a while.  And then he asked me my opinion of that exhibit. I said that I was indifferent to the exhibit.  He was aghast.  He took my statement to mean that I didn’t have an opinion.  So, I told him that I was indifferent to the issue because I was not pleased, shocked, disturbed, disgusted or dismayed by the exhibit. It was nothing to me, like graffiti on the street.

I saw that he was perplexed so I explained:

1.  The pictures and images of “Jesus Christ” in the exhibit are not true pictures of Jesus Christ.  Jesus was a Jew.  He looked like a Jew, he behaved like a Jew and he dressed like a Jew.  Those pictures portray a Caucasian man (brown-haired, blue-eyed) in soft pastel clothes.  Those pictures are not pictures of Jesus Christ at all.

2. Those pictures and images which others take to be a representation of Jesus Christ are not an accurate or truthful representation of Jesus Christ at all. Have any of those artists ever seen Jesus Christ in the flesh?  Were portraits of him made?  Did those portraits of him, if any, survive? How can we say then that those pictures are pictures of Jesus Christ?  It is a religious consensus of men to regard those pictures as pictures of Jesus Christ, and thus, pictures of God.  But they are not true or real pictures of God or of Jesus Christ, for the Bible is clear, “no man hath seen God at any time.”

Aside from the fact that the pictures are that of a Caucasian man which Jesus Christ was not, the pictures portray Jesus Christ with long hair and a trimmed beard. The representation of Jesus Christ there are not even accurate portrayals of the historic and cultural Jew.  They look more Spaniard to me than Jewish.  They resemble their sculptors more than they resemble the Jewish race.

In the OT, Jews were forbidden to grow their hair long and forbidden to trim their beards.  They are supposed to grow only the forelocks of their hair.  The only men who were permitted to grow their hair were the Nazarites, those who had a vow of separation unto God.  Jesus Christ was not a Nazarite, he was a Nazarene.  There is a difference: a Nazarene is a person who is a native of the city of Nazareth.

3.Since I attach no religious or spiritual significance to those images, my religious and spiritual sensibilities were not offended when Mideo Cruz decided to put condoms and penises on them.  Those pictures are just pictures created by other artists, they are products of the imagination of other artists.  Those pictures are not pictures of Jesus Christ and those pictures are not pictures of GOD. They are not revelations of God, they should not in any way  be associated in the worship of God.

4.Deuteronomy 4:12,, 15 &16 makes quite clear the purpose of God:  When God spoke to Israel to give them the law, Israel heard only a voice but saw no image or vision or physical manifestation of God.  The thick cloud covered the holiness of God so that Israel will not corrupt itself by making a graven image approximating the image or figure of God using the likeness of a male or a female.  From these verses, it is quite clear that taking the likeness of man to represent God and making it into a graven or molten image is odious to God.  God is never pleased with idolatry.

5.To take the picture of man and to use it to represent God is an abomination as far as the Bible is concerned.  This is because God refuses to be “likened” or “compared” to any of his creatures.  God is the creator.  Although his creation bear the marks of the Creator, his creation, no matter how beautiful just cannot do justice to the perfection and glory of God.  All creation has been corrupted by sin, God is not in any way tainted with sin. How then can we please God by likening him to a sinful man? It is dishonoring to God when we worship him using images of man to represent him.

Yes, Jesus Christ is God made flesh.  But his human body was given to him for a specific purpose, it was to be a once-for-all sacrifice for sin.  It was meant to be broken on the cross and glorified in the resurrection.  It was not meant to be displayed to arouse religiosity.

6. Most people say that they know that those images are not God, they just remind them of God.  But even this is dangerous for no product of the human imagination can ever capture the totality of God.  An image of a man hanging on a cross,, venerated by many as an image of Jesus Christ dying on the cross still falls under the category of “idol” in the Biblical definition.  And idols are an abomination.  Why?  Because the suffering on the cross is just one aspect of Jesus Christ.  The image of a man on the cross depicts his suffering and weakness, his humiliation and sacrifice, but it excludes his victory over death, his resurrection and his exaltation to the right hand of God, it is therefore an incomplete picture, so, it does not give us an accurate picture of Jesus Christ at all because it focuses on only one facet of the work of salvation secured by Jesus Christ.  To bow before the image of a man on the cross is to bow before an incomplete representation of Jesus Christ for Jesus Christ did not remain hanging on the cross, he was buried, he rose again the third day, and he ascended up into glory and he lives forevermore!

In sum, one’s religious and spiritual sensibilities will only be offended if one attaches spiritual or religious significance to those objects which were subject of the art of Mideo Cruz.  As I do not attach any spiritual or religious significance to them, I am not offended.  I am amused by the uproar, though.

Important religious personalities from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church ( and one prominent Baptist pastor-turned-politician) expose their religious ignorance when they say they are offended when Mideo Cruz desecrated the pictures of Jesus Christ, the pictures of God.  They show without doubt that they equate God with those pictures, that those pictures are representations of God.  To the ordinary Filipinos who practice folk Catholicism, those pictures and images are “God” himself.  This is ignorance and superstition, is this not?  This is idolatry, is this not?

God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth!