DEAR INRI: Happy anniversary! I’m glad you’re thinking about this issue. Too many men give lame Hallmark cards or jewelry or flowers. Kudos to you for wanting to go the extra mile! Here’s an unusual idea that I first heard from author and Crosswalk.com blogger John Shore:

Chocolate and candies can really send a message, for sure — but nothing says “I love you” like volunteering to trade the spiritual well-being of another for having yourself slashed, beaten to a pulp, and then hammered to a giant cross so that you can die a slow and unimaginably agonizing death.

It sounds like a daunting project, but you should be able to get everything you need at Home Depot and Whole Foods. And isn’t your wife worth the effort? I hope you make it an evening to remember!

But if you’re a real Christian, the kind who wants to use god’s supernatural powers to heal your mother of cancer, it’s nail-yourself-to-a-cross-time!

I mean, think about it, if you were Jesus, both god and the son of god, is there anything that would make you want to temporarily change the laws of science to benefit one of your worshipers more than his bloodily reenacting that time that you were tortured by your enemies?

I know that nothing brings out my generosity like vivid recreations of unpleasant episodes from my past!

Still, hand-wounds heal pretty easily (as evidenced by the dude crucifying himself for the Guinness-record 23rd time). I’d be a lot more impressed by believers who beheaded themselves and tried to fix things with transplants of elephant heads.

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.

They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.

Her lawyer steps up to her defense:

“She wasn’t delusional, because she was following a religion,” Silverman said, describing the findings of the doctors’ psychiatric evaluation.

Now, that’s the kind of excuse that might have flown 2000 years ago. But we really owe it to ourselves to demand more of people today.