Alistair Vierod


Jesus to the outsider: a Roman Centurion Jesus to the outsider: a Roman Centurion Today was quite an eventful day that lead me to question the beliefs that I have had since the day I was born. It all started when some big Jewish hotshot named Jesus was crucified because the rest of the Jews thought he was crazy. I think that the guy might have been a little off his rocker but not a threat to anyone, I heard he never even committed a crime besides blasphemy which is ridiculous considering that the Jews are blasphemous to the Roman Empire in themselves. What’s up with all of these Jews anyway always hanging out together, eating together, talking about how they want to become an independent state and stuff. Well what are they gonna do when we leave? Go back to hating each other again? Its not we’ve made things worse around here. We’ve (the Romans) have improved tons of things like the water system, education, healthcare, food, public safety, the economy, personal hygiene, architecture, the list goes on. Besides they haven’t even got a real army even though they talk about killing us all the time. So back to this Jesus man, Jesus apparently did all of this healing and miracles stuff which everyone liked he also had many moral teachings that he put into simple stories to make more understandable about how to live a happy honest life. From what I heard from the 3rd legion of Galilee his teachings make sense and sound pretty good for once. Then he even starts hinting that he’s this “Son of God,” or whatever the Jews call him, and that he is the messiah, the Jews “Savior.” The Jews who weren’t already following him around Galilee went ballistic when they heard about because he wasn’t killing us Romans and making Israel an independent state again, they said he was blasphemous. At first we (Romans) didn’t really care that much about this guy, just another philosopher as they would say back in Rome. But when Jesus made the mistake of speaking about a “Kingdom of Heaven” or something the government saw this as a possible uprising of Jews and the Brass (higher ranking generals) decided to finish him off by crucifixion and make an example of him. The Pharisees had also decided that they wanted Jesus dead but for different reasons, they saw a rising power and Jesus and wanted to snuff him out before they lost anymore power. So the Pharisees rallied up a bunch of Jews who were also a bit shifty about Jesus and set off to arrest him with the help of one of his good friends Judas Iscariot, he hung himself in shame, and they arrested him on the outskirts of Jerusalem. I’m not really sure what happened in between then and the crucifixion but I know he was already pretty tired when I saw him tied to the stump. The lashing was horrendous and the crowd humongous. They gave him 39 lashings in front of countless jeering Jews, JEWS! I know the ones who followed him blindly had either left his side to hide or were now at this moment embarrassing him. Those Jews sure are some strange personalities. The strangest this was that Jesus didn’t even say a word he looked completely inept to any physical action besides the command of the Roman centurion tell him where to go. Poor guy, I felt very sorry for him like he never deserved this, what did he ever do to us Romans or Jews, the answer is nothing he never touched us, threatened us, or deliberately offended us. In any case, I decided to leave my post and join the other three soldiers in watching this mans public execution. While he was up on the cross he kept recite things from what the jeering Jews told me was from there Holy Book or “scripture”. Then when he finally died his last words something about his father and about how we didn’t know what we were doing, like we were bad a crucifying or something, and I never saw any father of his around, in fact I also heard he did even have one! With his last gasp of air their was a big rumble in the earth like an army marching on Jerusalem, the other guys got a little nervous thinking we were being attacked or something. But I was being enlightened to what Jesus really was. His father was this God they spoke who was the king of the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom of love not any sort of kingdom we thought he was talking about. Somehow I found my self crying “HOLY CRAP! He really was the son of God!” The other three gave me a weird look like I had just fallen off the face of the earth and for the rest of the day they taunted me calling a disciple of “The Way” acting like a was a hippy. But once I am finished with my duty as a soldier I think I might join “The Way,” and leave everything I know behind. I think I’ve had too much wine tonight, good night I’m going to sleep and tomorrow maybe go hang out around the temple try to find one of those apostles or whatever they call themselves.