The Iconography of Sorrow: How Easter Transforms Our Response to Suffering
Luke Bretherton ABC Religion and Ethics 31 Mar 2015 It should not be the fickle attention of Western media that determines who appears as the subject of care. Uncoupled from contemplation of Christ crucified, we misperceive what suffering looks like. Credit: vincent desjardins / Wikimedia Commons From pictures of poor farmers in Depression era America to bloated children in Sudan, the contemporary aesthetics of poverty subtly reinscribe the ancient division between the children of the soil ( chthonoi ) and children of the gods ( theion ) familiar to us from the Greek and Babylonian myths. Those who live some form of what is often deemed the ideal "Western" lifestyle look down from Olympus with sympathy on the sons and daughters of the soil and their visceral imprisonment to nature and necessity. "We" who benefit from consumer lifestyles, technological advancement and decent sewers contemplate the photographs of stricken faces an...