You can say something is excruciatingly funny or that a comedy is excruciating. “But the root sense, all pain, is: ‘to crucify.” The Lain ex functions as an intensive. Cruciare ‘to crucify’ has the generalized sense to torture. That’s from John Ciardi’s 1980 A Browser’s Dictionary (123). The 2024 Merriam-Webster largely agrees with this saying under etymology: “derived from Latin excruciatus, past participle of excruciare “to torture,” from ex- “out of, from” and cruciare “to torment, crucify,” from cruc-, crux “cross” — related to cross, crucial, crucify “Excruciating” (Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/excruciating. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024). But Merriam-Webster give us the direct connection of “out of the cross” which makes any Confessional Lutheran pick up his ears, and now we’re to the excruciating 21st century.
I love that I can find stuff on the Internet that I know – maybe not all the details – but enough to look the thing up and find it there in full color and fast, fast, fast. I don’t like that every page asks me if I want their newsletter, 15% off, or to donate a kidney as soon as it loads. But I still use the online resources even about the half of the time I have the print resource…somewhere. You see, that’s the excuse and the rub. I feel like the vegan who eats chicken and shrimp.
Is that excruciating? Well, let’s go to the Cross to find out what in out 21st century is out of the cross. As you know, the Assyrians started crucifying, but in BC time this was impaling the person. Google’s AI generated response confirms what I knew: they did this longitudinally not transversely. Do you see how polite AI is? There is no other way to describe what the Assyrians did with other anatomically correct language that would not be vulgar at best and disgusting at worse.
The Romans took this ancient terrible way to die and made it worse. Crucified Assyrian style and you died quite quickly. Roman style with the nails and particularly if there was a small seat, sedile,[i] you could last from 3-5 days. Remember Pilate marveling that Christ was already dead?[ii] Also recall breaking the criminals’ legs. This was to give them a quick death and give us a clue to just what was excruciating about being crucified. It wasn’t the nails. It was your own body.
“The Medical Account of the Crucifixion of Christ” by Truman David, MD was published in New Wine Magazine, April 1982 from which I got it. But a footnote says, “Originally published in Arizona Medicine, March 1965, Arizona Medical Association.[iii] The good doctor writes on page 2: “At this point, as the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by his arms, the pectoral muscles are paralyzed and the intercostal muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically, he is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the lifegiving oxygen. It was undoubtedly during these periods that He uttered the seven short sentences recorded:”
Now we’re to the excruciating 21st century. You read above: “Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled…” I would always say at this point: This is also the horror of arsenic poisoning. I’m telling you this because I had to search and search on the internet to confirm this. If my wife should suddenly die from arsenic, this is to certify my searches were for this note here.[iv]
As you know, no one can hold their breath to kill themselves. Some can do it to pass out, but your autonomic nervous system automatically takes a breath. That’s what happens on the cross. You automatically breath, and once doing so no one can stop themselves from exhaling only it’s excruciating to do so and eventually you give in which leads to automatically taking another breath. And this could go on for days and days. Hence in Jesus’ promise to the thief the word “today” is almost as great as the word ‘paradise’ was.
So as the Roman cross used your own autonomic nervous system against you to torture you, so Big Tech uses good old fashioned Pavlovian stimulus and response as well as dopamine pathways, stimulation, and rewards to keep you surfing the internet, vegetating before YouTube, and/or emersed in a video game that only gets ‘real’ when you’re tired, depressed, burned out by it. And then like the drunk described in Pv. 23:29-35 comes the bite of drink, the sting of drink, the effects on sight, thought, deportment, as well as the nausea (sleeping on the high seas on top of a mast!), and finally the feeling no pain. abut how does it end according to Proverbs 23:35? “When will I wake up, so that I can try it again?”” And that website, that game, that video that leads to no good thing, we seek too.
So Big Tech has found a way to first immerse, then to entrap, and at last enslave us to tech. Read their own reports on this. Read how the average person looks at their phone every 4 minutes. And understand: this is all willful (at this point). No one holds a gun to my head to play a videogame. No one insists I use Google AI though it is persistent, invasive, and alluring. Kids are another matter of course, and it’s up to parents to protect them.
Yes, Big Tech is a cross we can come down off, but that, of course, is only because Jesus didn’t come down from His.
[i] Again, thanks AI. I couldn’t remember the word but I knew there was a specific name for it.
[ii] Mark 15:44 told me this after 3 minutes of searching to be sure I had the right Gospel. AI would’ve done that in a fraction of second.
[iii] Think of it. A secular medical society taking seriously the death of Christ.” I had this in my file “Complete Good Friday and Partial Easter Sunday Bible Class”, but rather than retype I copied and pasted.
[iv]Read Aldous Huxley’s short story from 1921 “The Gioconda Smile”. Yes, I had to look up what ‘Gioconda’ meant too.
