Glucklich also stresses that these examples of "sacred pain" are not limited to time or geography. In a more in depth analysis of the phenomena Glucklich quickly demonstrates that unlike is commonly believed, by people who are not entirely aware of the current religious lives of many different cultures would like to believe, all this "sacred pain" is not sheltered by the past, as if we are far to intelligent a world to continue with such a practice.

A few years ago I visited Israel during the Passover holiday. I was watching television one night with a friend and the staterun network ran a show on several Easter practices. One practice that caught our attention was a ritual crucifixion in a small Philippine town. We were shocked to see volunteers being nailed to crosses, then lifted high up above a crowd of devoted onlookers. My friend, Jacob Goren, who is a retired professor of engineering, a socialist and atheist, immediately launched into a tirade against the superstitions of religion. He ridiculed not only the Catholics of the Philippines, but all the other similar practices he could think of -- the Shi'i, self-beating for the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbala; Native Americans who suspend themselves from hooks inserted in their chests; and medieval penitential practices he had seen in movies. "Why," he asked with a mixture of curiosity and derision, "would anyone in his right mind do this? I would say they're crazy, but they can't all be!"

Glucklich 3)

It is clear that sanity is not a real question, just as it is not a real question in the case of masterminds who commit...

That is simply to simple of an explanation. The compulsion to value ones faith in such a high regard that one would voluntarily experience crucifixion, occurs in the modern world and though any outsider that witnessed such an act would likely be more repulsed than faith filled the real life experience is anything but crazy. Self-determination, "the trial by fire" as the old proverb, used with such nonchalance in the modern world, really does exist today and is an act of well-intentioned, and well-thought premeditation. The desire is to remove from oneself the sins of the mind, through suffering as was instructed by many a doctrine, not excluding the Christian doctrine.
For from within, says Christ, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and defile the man (Mark 7:21-3).

We think these things and therefore must realize the need to separate the mind from the body to cleanse it from the evil we hold within and make it a clean vessel for the reception of the lord.

Works Cited

Flagellants" The Catholic Encyclopedia online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06089c.htm

Glucklich, Ariel. Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Glucklich, Ariel, "Sacred Pain and the Phenomenal Self" Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 389-412.