Posted on 03/16/2002 6:42:19 AM PST by LarryLied
It's the most familiar symbol you can imagine, but ponder for a moment how odd it is that Christians display an "emblem of suffering and shame," as the hymn says.
The cross reminds us that Jesus was executed as a common criminal, hardly the upbeat message a publicist might choose.
Yet two decades after Calvary, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 6:14). Under this mysterious emblem, the early Christians vanquished the empire that had crucified Jesus.
The symbol holds 21st-century power. Two days after the World Trade Center attack, a rescue worker wept as he discovered a 20-foot cross -- two fused metal beams buried in the rubble. This cross provided comfort to impromptu worshippers amid the mourning.
Yet the cross is spurned by Christian liberals Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker. They find belief in Jesus' saving death repellent, saying this sanctifies violence and submission to evil.
"To say that Jesus' executioners did what was historically necessary for salvation is to say that state terrorism is a good thing, that torture and murder are the will of God," they say in their book Proverbs of Ashes (Beacon).
Brock, a Harvard Divinity researcher, has chaired the joint global ministries board of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, and was a theology speaker at the Disciples's national assembly last year. Parker is a United Methodist Church minister and president of the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, Calif.
Roman Catholic leftist John Dominic Crossan has joined in, hailing the authors' attack upon what he considers "the most unfortunately successful idea in the history of Christian thought." And the current Unitarian Universalist magazine features Brock and Parker in a cover story headlined "Violence and Doctrine: How Christianity Twists the Meaning of Jesus' Death."
"Perfect . . . sacrifice"
By contrast, another current author joins Paul in glorying in the cross. Fleming Rutledge, a traveling Episcopal preacher who lives in Port Chester, N.Y., embraces the Book of Common Prayer's Communion affirmation that Jesus Christ made "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world."
Rutledge has collected seasonal meditations in her book The Undoing of Death (Eerdmans). Though sermons often fall flat on the printed page, this book is unusually readable devotional fare.
She believes the cross is misunderstood if we forget that Jesus the Son is equally God along with the Father (which liberal Christians and Unitarians deny). And some conservatives portray "a wrathful Father piling condemnation on an innocent, victimized Son. This mistake must be strenuously resisted," she writes.
The heart of the atoning sacrifice on the cross, Rutledge insists, is "the fact that the Father's will and the Son's will are one. This is an action that the Father and the Son are taking together." They are "accomplishing our redemption together," acting in united love for humanity.
However, her Good Friday sermons worry less about such liberal or conservative theories than about people's inclination to pretend their sins aren't all that bad so they have no need of a Savior.
"We do not like to believe that we deserve condemnation," she says.
Some seek to justify themselves by the kind of people they like to think they are -- more moral, sensitive, loving, intelligent, thoughtful, patriotic, fashionable or socially aware than others. Then there's the opposite, people who tell themselves they're more misunderstood, long-suffering and deserving than anyone else.
But Christianity says we're all sinners in the light of God's holiness. Despite sin, Rutledge believes, when Christ looks at someone "he sees a person that he loves more than life, more than glory, more than power, more than riches, more than divinity itself."
She also contends that the cross shows us Christianity is true. The reason? Mere human imagination or wishful thinking would never have concocted "a despised and rejected Messiah."
Even this is IMHO far from being a wise and usefull course to take. It seems to try and give validation to circular logic. In the end, you are still relying on man's intellect to discern the meaning of both, and two wrongs don't make a right.
My religion is consistant with my religion's view of the scriptures, and likewise for your religion and pretty well everybody else too. They disagree with eachother, but internaly they are consistant and every one of us can use our view of the scriptures to discern scripture with other scripture in a way that supports our religion. Nothing is solved.
Nor do I think that such an approach is scriptural itself. James 1:5 promises that God will answer sincere prayers and help guide his followers to the truth, and I trust in that. Instead of resorting to 'a decade of rigorous study', we may simply ask God, who already knows.
Perhaps it is the Holy week effect huh?*grin*
It has seemed that there has ben a spiritual war recently ..I have noted an increase in anger among the body..this too will pass!
I have felt that also.
Wrigley, if the Lord told us first to seek the Kingdom of God, and to feed His sheep, (by word and deed.)
All the rest would be added unto us, no where has the Lord asked us to seek out what others do like a CIA type of organization to investigate his children, for this is the way the world operates.
Did not our Lord tell us to always pray and exercise faith?
In all due respect
BTW, I understand your need to be polite, but I am not sure what you mean by "In all due respect."
And I ask that with all due respect.
You are welcome to use your free will to follow the Lords way or your own way, Wrigley!
Of course the Lords way we must pray and exercise faith, discerning the Holy Spirit.
This takes patience and effort on our part to learn of Him.
The Worlds way is more familiar and seems to be more fulfilling for the spirit of got yaw!
Or I'll show you etc.
It’s void of all Love, and true to the nature of the natural man.
I don't deny that Satan and men have used religion as a means to their own ends, but Christ himself organized his followers and called leaders, thus establishing a religion, so I wouldn't paint them all with the same brush.
A relationship with God is not a device of Satan.
Of course not, but what kind of relationship can it be if He will not talk to you, or if you refuse to listen to those He has called?
And here I thought it was just because the olympics are over. ;^)
They may be forbidden from reading it Wrigley..rest does the church have a "do not read list?"
Who were these "spirit" children?(They would have brothers of jesus and lucifer right? The sexual product of god and his wife's intercourse??)
Do you have their request or the request of Wesley in their hand and is it open to public view?
First of all most Christians would deny the "works" part of your salvation process
I think you do not believe in a hell correct? But isn't it true that only those observant Mormons married in the temple can become gods and have their own planets which they populate with souls made with their wives/ (Isn't that why the early church believed in a man needing many wives?)
God choose the cannon of scripture..there are alot of other texts out there that are historically interesting but not part of the inspired cannon
As a side note I will say that Jesus quoted every book in the OT..I would say He knows the inspired cannon..
Wesley did not ask to be baptised a Mormon.
Wesley did not ask to be baptised a Mormon.
Are you saying that your earlier statement was not correct? Was He baptised as a Mormon even if he did not ask??
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