So defending piling on a person with misconstrued arguments because the person herself has been, ahem, koff, ah, vigorous is kind of a tu quoque.
The whole thing about crosses and such... To me, personally, the crucifix is a reminder that between now and the eschaton, most of what we do is "take up our cross daily," and that many of challenges of charity will be painful.
But more than that, I have this alleged though: That God shows his power in weakness, as a zygote, fetus, baby who must be feed and changed and washed and as a man hung on the cross. The "Way" is the way of the cross, and only at the end is it the way of the empty cross. So to me, looking at a crucifix is about the love that God shows in His willingness to suffer AND about how if I want to let that Love work in me, it's going to be really hard sometimes and I'm going to fail a lot. But these failures are as redeemable as the act of putting the righteous man on a cross.
Kinda like that.
YOUR attitudes seem Biblical, to me.
Keep in mind, please, that as a 7-8 or so year old kid, one day I was hysterical over the pain Christ experienced on The Cross in my behalf. My mother could not console me. I eventually calmed down with the hope that God somehow enabled him to bear it without it all being so outrageously over the line as it seemed.
Certainly God enabled Him to bear it. It was outrageously over the line.
A Roman Catholic et al crucifix still gives me the willies if I think about it much at all. And to view it grieves me and saddens me—not so much because of what it represents . . . as . . . that’s not His state. HE AROSE. Why not show THAT!