He had His skin TORN from his body.

A whip continuously tearing into raw flesh and muscle. A "crown" with thorns as long as my finger shoved onto His head, ripping into His scalp, blood pouring down into His eyes. He was Beaten. Broken. Tortured. Then a rough-cut, splinter-filled trunk of a tree slammed onto the raw bleeding muscle that used to have skin on it, and He was made to drag it up the Via Dolorosa to Calvary.

Nails the size of railroad spikes hammered through His hands and feet to secure Him to the cross before they dropped it into a hole, jarring His body, causing it to rub against the wood and tear at the nails in His flesh. Catch that, not " lowered it gently into a hole". They dropped the dead weight of the cross holding a 30 year old man into a hole that was deep enough for the cross to stand upright, and when it landed the momentum of His body kept going with only the nails in His hands and feet holding Him to the cross. They soaked a sponge in vinegar for Him to drink when He was thirsty. Then shoved a spear through His side so blood and water flowed from His body, proving He was dead. That description comes nowhere near doing justice to the true amount of physical agony He endured.

Now, switch the scene:

People throw beads at Mardi Gras without knowing they're standing at the doorway of 40 days of fasting and reflection that leads directly to the cross. How many know Mardi Gras is fat Tuesday? Or why? The restaurants offer the fish special and all people know is that it always comes this time of year. Not many actually know why.

Pastel dresses and bows. Light gray suits. White Lilies fill the front of the sanctuary as Church attendance swells, if only for the one day. People whose shadows only darken the doorway on Easter Sunday show up in their new dress and suits without knowing the true extent of what was given so they could be there.

I will say that there is a certain peace that comes when the daffodils and jonquils sprout. A comfort in dogwood trees blooming, in April showers, in the world starting fresh. A peace that comes with knowing God has paid a ransom for our souls to start new, free from the grasp of death, and placed it at the same time the physical world comes out of the death of winter and starts fresh and new.

And most people have no idea.

Which bothers me.

No. I'm sorry. "Bothers" isn't the right word.

It sets off a rage inside me.

Because there are supposed men and women of God who would rather sanitize the suffering and pain Jesus endured, because there are children in the congregation.

Jesus didn't take three licks with a paddle and get sent to the cross for a time out.

The rage boils inside me because the supposed men and women of God think that it is too much to show the scene from The Passion where the Jesus was crucified because of the children in the congregation. Fury! They SHOULD see it, they should know that it isn't all smiles and rainbows! They should know what He suffered so they could have the opportunity to spend eternity with Him. Add to that the fact that he knew; He knew His death had been ordered by His Father. He knew it was being demanded by the very people He was dying for.

As He hung there in agony, nails tearing at His hands and feet, barely able to draw breath, blood in His eyes, he said:

"Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."

Let that sit for a second.

He was being murdered. Slowly. Publicly. In the most humiliating way possible in that age. By the people He came to save, and His request, His dying request, was that God forgive them.

He asked forgiveness, and we have the audacity to withhold forgiveness from each other over offenses that don't even register on the same scale.

Jesus warned us directly, if you don't forgive others, your Father in Heaven will not forgive you. That's not a suggestion. That's not a guideline for mature believers. That's a condition. For everyone. Yet people call themselves Christians while refusing forgiveness to the person who hurt their feelings, cut them off in traffic, wronged them at work. Even serious offenses such as being cheated on, lied to, stolen from, or having someone you love taken from you. We have the audacity to refuse forgiveness for these offenses against us while Jesus was asking God to forgive the men driving nails through His wrists, tearing the flesh from His body with whips, and the Jews who demanded His death. The people He came to save, demanded His death. People who walked with with Him, talked to Him, witnessed His miracles...

How can people not get that?

What right does anyone have to refuse forgiveness and love to another?

Stop. Sanitizing. Salvation.

Because here's what scares me. The kids sitting in those sanitized Sunday school classes are going to grow up and meet Jesus eventually, the one who was tortured to death and still forgave. If what they were handed was a cleaned-up, comfortable, child-proofed version of the gospel, they aren't going to have understood the gravity of the commands to love unconditionally and to forgive in order to be forgiven . Who's responsible for that?

Jesus warned us Himself.

What happens to the person who causes a little one to stumble?

I know what He said.

And it isn't eternity with Him.

So teach the truth. The whole truth. The brutal, bloody, nasty, costly, scary, beautiful truth, that the God of the universe loved us enough to endure watching His Son suffer, and still He asked for our forgiveness as He hung there dying.

That's the gospel.

Stop sanitizing it.