Statue installed at slc temple “Jesus Christ Carrying the Cross”

[Doctor Steuss]

Here is the artists' gallery, if anyone is curious. I'm certainly not qualified to opine, but a few of his works hit me. I wonder who his model was for "Heaven and Earth"? The expression they have on their face makes my innards feel something, that I can't quite put a finger on. Kind of a bemused peace of sorts.

Gallery Link

As for these statues that the corporation commissioned, I'm trying to figure out why he put a nail wound on the foot, when this is a pre-crucifixion event? Stands out as a pretty glaring whoospie-doodle.

[Shulem]

As for these statues that the corporation commissioned, I'm trying to figure out why he put a nail wound on the foot, when this is a pre-crucifixion event? Stands out as a pretty glaring whoospie-doodle.

Huh? Nail wound, where? I don't follow that.



My God, this statue is ugly which is pretty much how I view the Christian doctrine of blood atonement and their cultish beliefs in blood. The whole thing makes me sick to think about it. Straight from the Dark Ages! Gross. And to think I was once a Christian Mormon who believed in Mormon Man-God having a swinging penis and a pair of balls. It still makes me wonder whose is bigger: Father or Son?

Not that it matters or is important to Mormons but it sure is something to laugh about and make fun of Mormon God!

[Doctor Steuss]

Huh? Nail wound, where? I don't follow that.

[Shulem]

Huh? Nail wound, where? I don't follow that.

I don't think that is a nail wound. Looks like natural layering in shaping the material to form the skin.

[Doctor Steuss]

I don't think that is a nail wound. Looks like natural layering in shaping the material to form the skin.

Possibly. I have a hard time believing he had the skill to make tiny, almost imperceivable drops of blood on the ground, the wrinkles from the bending toe, but lacked the skill while layering that particular spot to make it not look like a hole with radiating trauma lines.

[Marcus]

The disingenuousness is too much. Plausible deniability must be exhausting to maintain in these blog entries.

...Still, if we were beginning to place crosses atop our temples and our meetinghouses, that would represent a real change. But we’re not...

But out meetinghouses on Google maps are marked with crosses, so...that is a real change. We really are. But, the Afore can say not BOTH temples and meetinghouses use the symbols, and only symbols of our meetinghouses are crosses.

... If the interiors of our buildings were now being graced with occasionally even rather gruesome three-dimensional depictions of the wounded and suffering (or dead) Jesus on the cross, that would be something to talk about. But we’re not...

No, just statues of Jesus CARRYING the cross are gracing the EXTERIORS of our main temple. But again, the Afore has worded it with disingenuous deniability, even though the concept is there.

It's this kind of disingenuousness that seems to grace Mormon apologia. It feels like lying, because it ultimately is lying to imply something that's not quite true in order to avoid being truthful.

[Doctor Steuss]

The thing that amuses me in all of this is that "Jesus Christ" is itself a symbol, and that symbol is already on every English LDS chapel and Temple. It is a symbolic representation of vocalizations that aren't even His actual name.

But yeah, let's tantrum over a UNIVERSAL symbol that transcends individual written languages, that has been used by billions of followers of the Nazarene for nearly 2,000 years.

[Shulem]

It's this kind of disingenuousness that seems to grace Mormon apologia. It feels like lying, because it ultimately is lying to imply something that's not quite true in order to avoid being truthful.

The foot is inside the door and the suffering and decrepit looking Jesus will be in the foyer and chapel before too long. The Mormons will do anything to make others think they are genuine Christians regardless of their belief in a Father who has a swinging penis and a pair of balls. That's the Mormon God! What would Mr. Peterson say about Heavenly Father's penis?

[drumdude]

Jeff Holland in 2022:

One reason we do not emphasize the cross as a symbol stems from our biblical roots. Because crucifixion was one of the Roman Empire’s most agonizing forms of execution, many early followers of Jesus chose not to highlight that brutal instrument of suffering. The meaning of Christ’s death was certainly central to their faith, but for some 300 years they typically sought to convey their gospel identity through other means.

By the fourth and fifth centuries, a cross was being introduced as a symbol of generalized Christianity, but ours is not a “generalized Christianity.” Being neither Catholic nor Protestant, we are, rather, a restored church, the restored New Testament Church. Thus, our origins and our authority go back before the time of councils, creeds, and iconography. In this sense, the absence of a symbol that was late coming into common use is yet another evidence that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a restoration of true Christian beginnings.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... d?lang=eng

New Era 2012:

The fact that our Church doesn’t use the cross does set us apart from other Christians. So why don’t we use it? President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) once answered this question in this way: “For us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the Living Christ. … The lives of our people must become the most meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship. … Because our Savior lives, we do not use the symbol of His death as the symbol of our faith. But what shall we use? No sign, no work of art, no representation of form is adequate to express the glory and the wonder of the Living Christ. He told us what that symbol should be when He said, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments’ (John 14:15)” (“The Symbol of Our Faith,” Ensign, Apr. 2005, 3, 6).

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... s?lang=eng

An entire book on the subject from 2012:

It's a logical form for a building to take when its floor plan runs along two extended axes that intersect at right angles. It need mean nothing more than that.

[malkie]

...

It's a logical form for a building to take when its floor plan runs along two extended axes that intersect at right angles. It need mean nothing more than that.

Or, you could say:

It's a logical form for a building to take when you create a floor plan which runs along two extended axes that intersect at right angles. To me it means that the church either requested, or at least approved, such a floor plan. I'd assume that the form of the floor plan was completely within the control of the church, and not accidental or imposed from outside, but what do I know‽‽

I further assume that DCP is aware of that.