The Passion of The Christ

 We trapped the bird Steven and I. A large white bird using bread as bait and a simple snare consisting of a box propped up by a stick on one side with a cord we could pull attached to the stick.  I was surprised and delighted that it worked.  The bird could have been a sea bird because of its size and pure white feathers.  We just did it for fun; we were going from one thing to the next that summer when I was fourteen.  The bird stayed quiet under there but we had it and we weren't going to let it go.  I don’t remember if it was planned or not but we had some gasoline in a glass and some matches.  Looking down at the scared bird through the box top we could see it was frightened.  Okay one of us was to poor the gas on it and the other light the match on the count of three.  One two three splash whoosh!  I can’t recall if it was I or Steven who poured or lit the match we were a very efficient team. 

As soon as the gas ignited we took the box off and the bird flapped around the yard burning and squawking loudly for at least two minutes then lay still. Its feathers black and charred and flesh burned ugly.  I can still remember the smell of its burning feathers an acrid dirty smell.  I was speechless for a while.  We quickly buried the bird to hide our shame because we both felt ashamed I think.  We split up then and each went to our own homes.  It was a horrible sight that poor bird bursting into flames and his suffering while being burned alive. It was the cruelest thing I have ever done and I never spoke of it again not even to Steven. We grew apart after that and never did things together again, did we stop being friends? I guess so.  Afraid to tell because someone would think there was something wrong with me, ashamed to tell. I saw on TV a man treated like that.  It was somewhere in India or Pakistan or somewhere like that.  A mob was jeering a man they claimed was guilty of breaking some law.  Someone threw a bucket of gas on him while someone else lit the flame.  He burst into flame and the crowd seemed fascinated, perhaps I looked that way for my crime.  I could not believe that I was seeing a man being burned alive. Just before he was burned he seemed so docile so helpless like my bird then he was made to suffer.  God I hope those men in the crowd understood later the evil that they had done. It was a real documentary not a movie stunt.  I was forty something when I saw this.  I have also seen and read accounts of tribal genocide in Africa with people getting their hands and feet hacked off and left to die slowly; more inhumanity. Now at fifty years old I saw the movie The Passion of The Christ.  Jesus suffering at the hands of a mob and soldiers.  The beatings that wouldn't stop, the nails the scorn and the cruelty.  When I killed that bird I was like them.  Sure it wasn't a human being that I killed but what does that excuse?  I am a human being and I should have had compassion. Why did God let his son die on a cross at the hands of evil men like me? Sometimes I think it was out of compassion for us that he died; but what about Jesus where was the compassion for him? Why was his cruel death the only way? I cant understand it.  For so long I have never asked God to forgive me for killing that bird so cruelly.  I am asking him now.