Jesus With a Six-Pack
A tabloid runs a piece asking why Jesus Christ looks so well-trained on the cross.
That’s the entry point.
Not theology. Not history. Body fat percentage.
It sounds like satire, but it isn’t. It’s perfectly serious in the way the system is serious. The image is taken, reframed, and pushed through a logic everyone already understands: fitness, optimization, visible results.
The crucifix becomes a physique question.
And that’s enough to stop you for a second.
There was a time when that image resisted you. You couldn’t reduce it without feeling something push back. The body on the cross wasn’t there to be evaluated. It was there to confront. To slow you down. To make looking slightly uncomfortable.
Now it resolves instantly.
Abs. Definition. A trained body under strain.
The translation is complete.
No one had to decide this consciously. No editor sat there thinking, “Let’s banalize the sacred.” The system does it automatically. Anything that enters it gets reshaped into something quickly readable. Something that fits existing patterns.
And fitness is one of the strongest patterns we have.
It’s measurable. Visual. Universally legible. You don’t need context to understand it. You just see it.
So even a crucifix gets pulled into that orbit.
This is where the shift sits.
Not in belief. You can be a non-believer and still feel it.
The question is simpler.
Is anything still allowed to remain outside of use?
Because that’s what the sacred used to do. It marked a boundary. Something you don’t immediately turn into a tool, a signal, or a piece of content. Something that stands there and does not adapt to you.
Now everything adapts.
Everything becomes material.
A suffering body becomes an aesthetic object. An aesthetic object becomes a talking point. A talking point becomes traffic.
And the whole movement feels smooth. Natural. Almost inevitable.
That’s what makes it hard to even call it out.
There’s no clear moment of violation. Just a quiet shift in what we do with things.
The unbearable gets softened.
The complex gets flattened.
The distant gets pulled close until it loses its shape.
So the question “Is nothing holy anymore?” misses.
Nothing was taken.
We just removed the friction.
And without friction, nothing holds.
Everything slides.
Even a man on a cross turns into a set of abs.
Not because we stopped believing.
Because we stopped stopping.