[trigger warning: crucifixion, death, suicide, misgendering, transmisogyny, transphobia]

this year’s Good Friday seems different to me. perhaps I haven’t paid much attention in the past or i have a different group of Facebook friends than i did last year* but there seems to be more blog posts and articles about why “Good Friday” is called “good.” This day commemorates Jesus’ crucifixion at the hands of the Roman Empire. In this season, there tends to be a lot of theologizing, which is a consistent tendency of Christians. But I wonder if the “Goodness” of this Friday is lost to us such that we cannot see or hear our contemporary Christs and prophets.

Good Friday is the day Jesus died on the cross which represents various things for different Christians: God’s forgiveness of sin, Jesus “taking on the wrath of God,” Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, etc. And all of these meanings are closely connected, if not two sides of the same coin (or multiple sides of a weird looking die).

But when I think of Jesus, I think of someone who occupies multiple spaces in his society. He has certain privileges as a man, but is also a member of a colonized and exploited people–the Jewish people. In the latter, I regard Jesus as a deeply marginalized man. Thus, in the same regard, Jesus was crucified as that marginalized man; they mocked him with the title “King of the Jews.” This was not some epiphany. “King of Jews” was insulting because the King of the Jews was just crucified. Utterly humiliated so much that he did not feel that God was with him.

In this same way, all marginalized people are identified in Christ on the cross. What is good about this? It means that we are not alone. It means that we can look to our people–those who look or feel or act or are like us in our marginalized states–and say not only “I see God in you,” but more importantly, “I see you.”

On quite an ambivalent note, I’m totally not comfortable with a man being the symbol of all oppressed people. Not for any overtly political reason** either. It is simply that I have spent my whole life being forced to identify with the category of “male” when I certainly did not want to and the above reflections do exactly that. They forcibly identify me with “male.”

Indeed, plenty of feminist liberation theologians have thought “how the hell does anyone get away with saying ‘Christ saved humanity because he experienced human suffering’ when he has not experienced female suffering?” Of course, many of these thinkers turn out to be transmisogynistic–either overtly or covertly–usually by associating “female” with a specific body type.

But I think they’ve still got a point. Why are women and trans people and intersex people and so many others of different genders and body types expected to just assimilate themselves into ancient categories of “man”? What if we are not actually included in the life of the Church? On Good Friday, Jesus spoke no doctrines. Jesus was the object of such ridicule and dehumanization.

Many will say “Jesus died for what he believed in” but perhaps modern Christians are actually on the other end, executing people for who they are? Ridiculing them, dehumanizing them, humiliating our present-day Christs. In my experience, that is what Christianity is. Christianity always has at least two faces: the face of the privileged and the face of the oppressed. The privileged Christianity is orthodoxy–canonized by (and for) men, dedicated to maintaining its power so much that it is willing to be intimate with the imperial powers and further marginalize its own oppressed face. The oppressed face of Christianity which are those heretics.

How suspicious is it that so many heresies are also ones that had relatively egalitarian views of leadership? I can’t help but think that the condemnation of Gnosticism had something to do with its growing influence among Christian women. Female leadership meant that the tradition would have been more infused with feminine imagery, like, perhaps, a crucified woman this time. “The crushing weight of this tradition, of this power structure, tells us that we do not even exist.” [1]

What’s “good” about being excluded indefinitely from something that is allegedly “for” me? Every day it becomes increasingly clear that I have no place in Christian orthodoxy. For me, there was no surprise(!) resurrection. For me there is only the utter humiliation on earth and absolute uncertainty at whether anything I did was worthwhile. For me, Good Friday is the ending of a most Unholy Week. And will any orthodox hear my cries that God has abandoned me? Will anyone not just say “there is hope” but actually create it? How can anyone celebrate on this day when trans people have been crucified in Eastern University’s housing policy, among plenty other instances?!

“Hey we know you want us to believe who you say you are, but we’re going to force you into this dejected and humiliating space, knowing full well that it could likely kill you.”

Resurrection is a mere distant hope that my own community can be materially changed. But alas, today I remain dead to them.

* I forget exactly when this happened, but it was either at the very end of last semester (fall 2014) or during winter break. Facebook suspended my account indefinitely because some asshole reported me as “not using my real name,” having begun using a different name that was more congruent with my gender. I was not unable to get that account back unless I changed my name back to the name I used for 21 years. So naturally I said “fuck that” and made a new account and began a relatively selective “friending” process.

** all things are political, i know. bear with me.

*** even Pilate’s wife defends Jesus.

[1] Lynn Japinga, Feminism and Christianity, 133.