Misguided "fundamentalists" and "conservatives" believe that if you "go through the motions" of church (or synogogue or mosque) attendance, Bible (or other scripture) reading and recitation, and even tithing, you'll be saved. But if you don't know, experience God and The Word, and follow the teachings every day, you're as lost as if you'd never done anything but pray. "By their deeds ye shall know them."

The Golden Rule has nothing whatsoever to do with chastity and that misconstruction is a total misunderstanding of the message of Genesis, the fall from paradise and innocence to cursed humanity with its wars and sufferings for material power and, and over, things. The benighted belief of the Catholic Church, for instance, that real service to God and Christ is sexual negation and denial is not based on the Gospels, or the Old Testament. Jesus never said anything like that, nor did the prophets preceding him, nor any commandment of God.

"Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets." Those don't distinguish between sex, gender, ethnicity, background, wealth, position, skin color, physical attributes, language, expression, or locality, but are universal. Jesus also said, reiterating previous instructions to God's people, "Go, and sin no more."

Jesus has been the subject of a very long-lasting smear campaign, also, to distort and damage his identity and reputation, most particularly by the Catholic Church initially and continuing through other denominations of the faith, many of whose popes, priests and preachers fathered illegitimate children to mention the least onerous of their historic dalliances and digressions in violation of chastity vows. He was not, for instance, a pale-skinned gentile with blonde hair, or meek and mild. He was tough, courageous, bold. A man (with all the normal human male physical attributes, including body and facial hair and finger and toenails) who walked, traversed many, many miles, leagues, talking with strangers, enraged by the temple money-changers, a lover most probably, with younger brothers and sisters as well as parents and friends, devoted acquaintances, supporters and followers, powerful enemies and disdainful disbelievers. Maybe his nose ran from the wind and sand and his eyes, when not closed, reflected, expressed his soul. He had ears, of course, too to hear the rain and God whispering or thundering through it. Jesus confronted the wilderness, desert, cities, towns and countrysides, and contended with Satan. He was tempted with riches and material power, chose immortality instead, and fought, fights to deliver his message of serving God and man and thoughtful, conservative husbandry of all God's creation. We don't have a clue what he and other Gospel figures looked like, maybe because it isn't important really.

We do know that he was mortified -- mocked and crucified, undignified in a loincloth, with a crown of thorns on his head and a jeering sign proclaiming "King of the Jews" over it. From that he returned, walking the earth again with friends to prove that he was and is just that, then and still, always and forever the warrior king, the prophesied Old Testament Messiah who promised he would return to the world of men, the Second Coming, for the believing faithful, a healer who'll reign in peace and justice "for a thousand years" (whatever that is in "the eyes of Divinity") in the name of God over His creation on this small, spinning planet in the infinite universe He brought into existence with and through The Word, the mystery central to all that is and was and ever shall be.

So get rid of those S&M sex toys: the near-naked Jesus nailed to a crucifix. It was not a good Friday when he buckled under the weight of the cross carrying it on his back through streets of the curious, nor later when bodily fluids and waste ran down from and on his body, agonized in every way with pain and physical distention, as he expired slowly before his weeping mother, Mary Magdalene and friends, callous soldiers and unsympathetic strangers. He didn't die for anyone's sins, but at the hands of corrupt and jaded Romans who also found it amusing on an earlier day to sever St. John The Baptist's head and serve it on a platter to Salome while she danced. If you love Jesus, put his robes back on him and hear his words, instead of distracting yourselves and others with sick images and fantastic satisfactions. The message is his life, teachings, resurrection and ascension. He's a Jew, a modest man deserving respect and admiration for his work and consciousness, who lived and lives to show the way and asks that you follow him with comfort and thanksgiving.