Here's a pre-Christmas offering from one of my favorite cartoonists, David Hayward, a Canadian who describes himself sometimes as "a graffiti artist on the walls of religion."
Hayward spent some 30 years as a pastor of conservative Presbyterian and Vineyard congregations before withdrawing from the ordained ministry and devoting his devolved attention as the "Naked Pastor" to gently skewering, and/or poking fun at, organized Christianity.
In this instance, Hayward takes on the dark underbelly of "the most wonderful time of the year" --- a rather gloomy mix of original sin and blood sacrifice rolled out as substitutionary atonement in the theology of most Christian sects.
Hayward's take on the whole thing proposes that, to Jesus, saving grace involved learning how to love one another and then doing so by following his directions and example; that the incarnation was an example of a loving god intervening to teach.
We're slow learners and have far to go in this direction. On the other hand, substitutionary atonement hasn't gotten us anywhere at all.
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