by Christopher Keimling

And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do." Luke 23:34.

The other day I visited a Christian bookstore near my house. Having driven past it so many times on my way to work, I finally grew curious enough to stop by and check it out.

Once inside, I found nothing out of the ordinary -- Bibles, cards, books -- until I stumbled across the apparel department in the back of the store. The stuff they had back there was so tacky it made my stomach churn.

I saw a sweater depicting a bloody Christ struggling beneath a massive, over-sized cross. It spanned his shoulders and was so gigantic and heavy that it threatened to flatten him like a pancake. On it were the words THE SINS OF MANKIND.

While a profusely bleeding Christ is a common enough sight, there was something different about this depiction. It put a powerful new spin on his suffering which I hadn't seen before. Not just forced to endure pain and humiliation, here he was also fighting to save himself from being crushed. The image actually showcased his strength more than it did his suffering. Usually when you see Christ with a cross, he's either on it or he's dragging it on one shoulder to his own crucifixion, looking kind of dejected. Here, he was Atlas Christ, holding up the world. I could see his muscles strain.

The power of this image was quickly lost, however, when I read the large print above the picture. It said, LORD's GYM. Underneath it said Bench Press This!! I was horrified. This is too much! Way beyond tasteless. Its effect on me was made worse because I had stopped by the store on my home from working out.

So there was Christ, bench pressing. Actually, he seemed to be doing more of a push up than a bench press. On another t-shirt, he was doing arm curls. Each of the hand weights weighed "10,000 sins."

Besides the Messiah-Pumping-Iron motif, there were other disturbing styles to choose from. One showed a close-up of Christ's shoulders and back, bleeding from horizontal slashes as the result of repeated whipping. The t-shirt read, "If you want to know what Love means, read between the lines." Another shirt pictured a normal Jesus, next to the words "Rebel -- with a cause." This didn't strike me as offensive, because it was true. He was a rebel. I developed a picture in my mind of Jesus wearing sunglasses, riding a Harley, and spreading the word with a black-leather gang of apostles. I could see his hair whipping in the breeze, and Mary Magdalene riding in his sidecar.

If they had a shirt like that, I might have bought it.