No Mercy Intended

 At one point during Christ's crucifixion, he says that he is thirsty, and a Roman soldier lifts a sponge soaked in vinegar to his lips, but Christ refuses it.  

A very common "explanation" for this tableau -- and one which I have long believed to be not merely mistaken but utterly false -- is that this was an act of kindness or mercy, the vinegar being offered to dull the horrible pain of the crucified victim, and that Christ refused it so as to fully experience taking upon himself the weight of mankind's sin.  But, this doesn't make sense; for the whole point of crucifixion was to kill the condemned by slow torture, with as much humiliation and horror as possible.

Here is what I believe to be what was really going on: the Roman soldier was offering Christ vinegar delivered on the Roman equivalent of toilet paper. In their public latrines, Romans wiped their asses with sponges on sticks. Christ refused it not because our salvation required him fully experience the horror, but because it was unclean.

Coincidentally, just before I started writing this post, I did a quick search and came across the following web-page, which argues for the same conclusion -- The Crucifixion Sponge: Adding Insult to Injury