You hear it everywhere, all through the media, movies, television programs, and public events: ‘Jesus!’ ‘Christ!’, but mostly ‘Jesus Christ!’ These exclamations mostly express surprise and disgust. A particularly egregious example is a pinched-face woman on the top-rated program GOGGLE BOX, who constantly expresses her disgust for her husband, among other things, by crying ‘Jesus Christ!’.
But the gratuitous declaration of ‘Jesus Christ!’ by a well-known presenter at the Logies Awards struck me as truly mindless and moronic. As stillness descended on the audience, I felt the presenter had embarrassed them.
Jesus Christ is the founder of Christianity, which is the foundation of Western Civilisation. Law, education, hospitals, charitable institutions, and much more flowed from that foundation. So what’s the connection between the name of Christianity’s founder and exclamations of surprise and disgust? None, in fact. It’s just mindless and moronic.
A second point, meaning nothing to a certain class, is that such exclamations are blasphemy, which is deeply offensive to Christians, of whom there are still many in Australian society. A self-declared tolerant society should not offend a large proportion of its fellow citizens. They know that other religions established in Australia would not tolerate such offence. I’m thinking of one in particular. So lazy sprayers of Christian blasphemy display gutlessness in addition to offence.