Station No. 7

It's not often that a ten year old can stir up international controversy but Jackson Potts of Houston, Texas managed to do it this Easter with his photograph "Station No. 7." It is a photograph depicting a crowd approving of a police officer beating a small boy with his night stick. The photographer was Jackson Potts, now 11, who explained the photograph's symbolism as follows: the child is jesus, who was totally innocent; the policeman represents the centurion who beat Him when He fell, the man was "just doing his job;" the crowd on onlookers represent those who stood by approvingly or those who watched and said nothing; and the little girl in the blue dress represents Jesus' followers who were appalled by what they were seeing.

The photograph was commissioned by Xnihilo Gallery, a Christian art gallery in Houston which shares its space with the Ecclesia Church, as part of it's annual Stations of the Cross Exhibit. When they saw it, the controversy erupted.

Some believed that Jackson's father did the photograph but the main objection was that many on the board were "afraid it would not protect the impressionable minds of young children." Some wanted the photograph banned but the final decision was to exhibit the photograph only on the opening night of the exhibit and to place it behind a curtain with a parental warning placard.

What???? Christians hiding Jesus being a curtain? What weenies some of us have become. Realize what the world thinks of us.

"Piss Christ" is a 1987 photograph of a small plastic crucifix floating in a glass of the photographer's urine. It was an award winner and was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, an agency of the United States government.

"The Holy Virgin Mary," a collage by Chris Ofili (1996) uses a paiting of Mary based on primitive African art and splattered with elephant feces. It is defended as art by many critics and art professors.

Those are supposed to be OK but a reverent symbolical treatment of an event in Jesus' life is not. Children are supposed to begin mandatory sex education including the subject of "alternate lifestyles" in elementary school, but they may be frightened by the truth of what the world did to Jesus. Using the arguments of the secularists, we should expose our children to scriptural teachings, even the harsh things, as they become able to understand. If they are not yet ready, we should exercise parental responsibility just as the secularists tell us. But we should not hide or dilute the truth. The first Christians never hid from the truth and neither should we.


"A new image and new lessons," http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6911097.html

Busttillo, Miguel, "A (Very) Young Artist Makes Waves," The Wall Street Journal,3-4 April, 2010, p. W9.

"Dung-covered Madonna sparks controversy: Art professor Michael Davis takes a look," College Street Journal, http://www.mtholyoke,edu/offices/comm/csj/991008/madonna.html

http://Jacksonstation.blogspot.com/

Mercer, Ilana, "Dung and other offal at the gallery," http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=269

"Piss Christ," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ