The Cross: An Attempt at Clarification

My previous post was met with excellent criticisms and points considering how I laid it out. I want to try and explain a bit more of what I was attempting to elucidate.

Most of this was inspired by my class on the History of Anti-Semitism, and it wasn’t until the cross became the central symbol that there was then a subsequent theological shift in Christianity to then view Christ’s death as not merely a bygone act, but instead, with the means of his execution taking centrality in Christian symbolism, his killers were considered to be eternally killing him (indeed, Jews were later accused of stealing Christian boys and crucifying them annually). While I’m crunching many centuries of historical development, suffice it to say that the Crusades, pogroms, burning of the Talmud, the secrecy surrounding the Kabbalah, the stigma of Jews in economics, leading right up to the Shoah can all be traced to the Jews existence posing a troubling question as to Jesus’ messiahship.

While a few key theologians attempted to persuade Christians to allow the Jews to live, albeit in a restricted fashion, the majority of thinkers instead found justifications for attacking synagogues, forcing conversions, causing mass suicides, and spewing anti-Jewish rhetoric. Jesus fulfilling the Hebrew Scriptures came to mean that the Jews were thus willfully ignoring his being their Messiah, which means that they should be put to do death because they killed Jesus instead of believing in him. Christian history is filled acts of violence against Jews, but this wasn’t until Constantine took over.

Constantine’s political and religious maneuverings staying the same, my question is this: Would such a history have taken place had Christianity adopted the Star in the East or the Empty Tomb as its central symbol? If Jesus’ birth or resurrection was paramount over his death? If it wasn’t viewed as a sacrificial atonement for sins, but a triumph of God over the worst humanity could do? When I speak of man triumphing over God, I mean that had there been no Easter, then God would have been defeated by man. However, because God rose again on the third day, God emerged victorious despite humanity’s sincerest efforts.

Looking at our history, I see much death and destruction in Christianity’s history. While I cannot say, of course, that a simple change in symbolism would’ve prevented feudal lords from marching their armies to the Holy Land, I do wonder at how electing a symbol of death changed history instead of choosing an example of life via a symbol from Easter. I understand that we look at the cross and we do not stop the story at death, but continue it on to the triumph of God over sin, but that means Easter is conflated into the symbolism. While that is well and good, I wonder if perhaps our history has not been left behind. There is still much within our institutions that seem to carry the burden of the past, and I wonder if the cross’ prevalence is a factor.

These are musings, really. A sweeping change in iconography will never happen after so much has been placed on the symbol used. I merely wanted to explore how the historical conception of, use of, and justification of the cross not only guided our forefathers in faith, but how that history affects us still today.

And another thought only tangentially related… If Jesus was, is and forever shall be. Does that not mean that Jesus was, is and forever shall be Jewish? What does that mean for us who are not Jewish?

The Cross

The Cross has long been a symbol of varying meanings. When it has equal-length bars, you might have the Red or Blue Cross, a plus sign, the Swiss and so on. But should you extend the bottom bar so that it approximately doubles or triples the other bars’ length, you have a very different symbol. You have a symbol of the largest religion in the world. You have a symbol of hope for many. You have a symbol of terror for others. You have an interesting combination of meaning, history, faith, and power wrapped up in a very austere combination of two lines.

Bono has this to say of the Christian cross:

“… in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.”

For many others, the cross symbolizes the crux (if you will) of the Christian faith. Jesus Christ, son of God, died in atonement for the sins of humanity. A powerful story. One that has reached every corner of the globe. One that has changed many lives.

But what does it mean to have the cross be the central symbol of a religion? What does it mean to have these crucifixes around people’s necks, hanging over pulpits, planted outside Auschwitz?

It means that a Roman device for political execution commands the most authority on Earth at this moment. It means an instrument of death is ubiquitously present in our society. Certainly its meaning in that regard has become secondary or even absent in the face of the meaning Christianity has appropriated it for. We have, in the face of defeat and death, conquered through Jesus’ resurrection, which makes this symbol of death a symbol of hope. It inverts the terror the cross instilled during Roman rule and instilled hope instead. How is it that such a hopeful religion could now inspire that same terror with the same symbol?

I just had a chance to learn about where the cross came from as a Christian symbol. It was through Constantine, a Roman emperor. As he marched to usurp the Roman emperor, a vision came to him before the final battle. As this is a traditional story, there are different versions, but in essence, he had a vision of the cross and a voice said “By this sign, conquer.” He had the cross constructed and borne before his armies as he went on to victoriously conquer Rome and become Emperor. He then worked quickly to make Christianity not only legal in the Roman Empire, but also the eventual religion of choice. Thus, it wasn’t until the 4th century by a theretofore Pagan emperor that the cross became significant. Furthermore, the cross didn’t become theologically defended until Anselm in the 11th century. But history brings us to today with the cross being the iconic symbol for Jesus Christ.

But I wonder. What if instead of the cross, the death of Jesus, being enshrined… what if instead the main symbol was an empty tomb, or of the stone that was rolled away Easter morning? What if the historical focus of Christianity was not on the triumph of man over God, but of God’s triumph over death?

If you’ve been to an Easter service, I’m sure you’ve seen this. There is a black shroud placed over the cross from the Maundy Thursday or Good Friday service. On Easter morning that black shroud symbolizing death is cast off! And in its place a purple or pink or triumphant color is draped over the cross instead. What has happened? The cross is still there. It is merely veiled in new garb. The death of God is still paramount. The triumph of man over God is still glorified. The importance of Jesus being killed still precedes the infinitely more important part of his resurrection.

I do not have the time to tease this out much further, but let me draw some hasty conclusions as to the effects this centralization of death has had. By centralizing God’s death, God’s killers become all the more eternally culpable and to blame. It is not difficult to trace that to events such as the Shoah. Placing Jesus’ death as the turning point in history makes believing in the significance of that death more important than living out the life that preceded it. A common mistake is to think that AD means “after death” as if his death was truly the mark of a new epoch. It actually means “Anno Domini” or, the year of our Lord, which marks his birth, another aspect of Jesus’ life that gets completely overshadowed by his death (despite Christmas). Having everyone’s minds bend towards the execution of God instead of the birth, life or resurrection of God means that humanity is eternally bent on deicide. While the Jews have historically and are contemporarily blamed for the specific crime of deicide, the entire religion of Christianity flourishes around the idea of God’s death. This means our eyes are forever pulled back to the Trial, the Passion and Golgotha. We seek to put ourselves up on the cross with/for Jesus so that we can die as he died, instead of living as he lived. While up on that cross, we are able to look down on everyone else as we arrogate holiness, purity and infallibility to our means, modes and methods. Unfortunately, this very well could mean that we, too, shall eventually asphyxiate.

Perfection

The concept of perfection was recently challenged for me. Perfection, in the usual sense of the term, involves flawlessness, no mistakes, lack of problems, absence of imperfections. Thus, if you have a perfect replica, there is no way it can be distinguished from the original object. If you have a perfect circle, then every point on that circle is equidistant from its center.

 

The cliché “Practice makes perfect” comes to mind. I remember raising issue with this phrase to my mother once. It seemed impossible to me that someone could ever achieve perfection through practice. My mother made an insightful point, “Perfect practice makes perfect.” Even during our best practices, we are imperfectly practicing that art or craft or sport. Thus, we can never be perfect through practice because we are merely practicing imperfections.

 

Theologically, God is understood to be perfect. The divine has no flaws, problems, or imperfections. How does one reconcile that notion with the existence of Jesus Christ? A wholly human and wholly divine being, which implies perfection and imperfection simultaneously existing. It seems contradictory, implausible, impossible, nigh even incredible. Furthermore, this divine, perfect being not only existed as a human, but he was born, lived and then died as one as well. It seems that perfection has its limits. Or, in other words, that God has limits.

 

However, God is in fact limitless. God is indeed perfect, as was Jesus. Jesus managed to combine the perfection of the divine with the imperfection of the humane in the action that elevates humanity as close to perfection as humanly possible: Jesus embraced his humanity. The most historically defining characteristic of humanity is our mortality. In the Greek epics, the only characteristic that defines gods from men is the gods’ immortality. Other than a lack of death, the gods are just as humans. In the case of Jesus, he managed to achieve a theretofore unknown possibility: the co-existence of divine and human perfection. The divine perfection is an inherent characteristic of God, and therefore Jesus. However, the human perfection comes from the embrace of human imperfection. By utilizing the very “flaw” humans experience, that of death, the victory Jesus achieved provided the in-credible result of overcoming that “flaw” for the hope of all who surrender themselves to their simultaneous weakness and strength: imperfection. It is through imperfection that we are able to grow, adapt, change, die, birth, diversify, and unify. Imperfections are the source of not only pain and suffering but of joy and celebration as well.

 

The challenge perfection underwent recently for me was a claim that someone cannot be perfect if they make a mistake. If they are, in a word, imperfect then perfection is impossible. I disagree. Just as Jesus achieved an amazing degree of perfection, so too can we strive for perfection through recognizing and embracing our humanity. It is when we seek to be superhuman, to be divine ourselves that our imperfections are able to create such horrors as the Holocaust, Apartheid, the Crusades, poverty, hunger, injustice. Instead of viewing one’s self as deficient or imperfect when beset by failure, it is through communal support, learning and reconciliation that all can take another step towards the perfection understood as unobtainable.

 

I do not agree that a mistake precludes perfection. I feel that ongoing ignorance coupled with a lack of compassion is where perpetual imperfection lies. That combination implies an inability to learn from and with others. Jesus did not achieve perfection on his own. It took all of humanity to elevate him upon that cross. As long as people maintain self-righteousness, malice, selfishness and pride then we hold Jesus upon that tree. However, if we support one another through the very sins that put him up there, we can elevate ourselves to the same heights and work together to join him in that place of simultaneous weakness and strength.