Rolling over this morning, I happened to just quickly check—I’m not obsessed or anything—my stats page to see if anyone might have hit my blog while I was sleeping, and, oh my goodness, what happened?
A post from over half a year ago is suddenly inundated by views? The weird thing is, it’s been slowly getting hits these last few days. Why and how? What’s so great about it, I mean, besides the fact that I wrote it?
Anyway, it’s something for which to be thankful this upcoming holiday.
In Defense of the Cross was my way of combating a nasty meme I’d been noticing. Christianity, at its barest, is the miracle of Christ, most notably His death and resurrection. It is at once the most poetic, the most powerful moment in the gospel story, and something for which I am in eternal thanksgiving.
Tale Told 
Jesus can keep the cross. I’m not a martyr so I refuse to be associated with that shit. I’m a survivalist so I make my own religious symbols.
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That’s your choice. But may I gently say, with that decision, you have missed the love of God in it. You see, there was and still NO other way He could have a way to bring us back to Himself. When you become a seeker, amd you will sooner than you think, He will show you why Jesus’ blood had to be shed for our sins. You may not it when you find out there is another, who is a deceiver, who doesn’t want you to “know”. A new life you will never regret. The decision you are following now really is not your own. God bless you as you begin to seek for the truth held in the cross of Jesus.
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I’m good thank you. I found Jesus hiding behind the couch. I appreciate him dying for my sins, but I think it a pretty slack thing for the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god to predestine everyone to suffer. Before they even have a chance to be born.
Jesus was cool, his dad had some real issues. I think it much more becoming of character to own your own behaviour and intentions. There is no fear of eternal punishment that motivates me to be a good person. I treat others with respect and dignity that their actions deem worthy. I trust until that trust if otherwise broken. I love until that love is otherwise abused. I serve others by actually listening to them and being there for them.
I sought answers and I found them. And they were not found in one single book, but many. They were not found in one single country’s culture and tradition, they were found in many. Answers were found by looking within and looking out, reflecting back and glancing abreast to my kinsmen. Call me the whore of babylon who rideth the beast with seven heads and 10 horns. Because I love the people of the world.
There is no love of god. God punishes. He disciplines. He strikes his belt to punish all of the wicked – which he set up to fail from the beginning. A father who feels detached from his children, a father who can birth everything on his own. Yahweh who struck Asherah from all record. His own wife. Because shouldn’t it be “man and woman”? Apparently? Or is it just god masturbating and spreading his seed wherever it may fall? Than perhaps it is god who is profane, wanton and full of pride.
It is fine for a man to bleed for others, but when a woman bleeds every month, she is deemed unclean. Thanks Jesus, you can keep the cross. Distract the masses with your bloody execution while we teach people to think who the true deceivers and oppressors are.
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I admit, I cannot sympathize with your description of God. From what I know of Him, you seem to be talking about a completely different person. I’m surprised you see the image of the cross in opposition with being a survivalist: Is the cross not an image of surviving? On a personal level, I find the cross has been an answer to me in my darker moments when all I want to do is end it all. There is the answer to suicide, as far as I’ve found, to face the suffering of this world even when you cannot see God, even when your soul cries, “My father, why have you forsaken me?”
Not running from, but meeting death is the solution, picking up our crosses and treading the way of Truth, for then what dies is refined, given new life.
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I find the wheel to be much more akin to the idea of survival. To not be fixed to one spot, nor dragging along the baggage of burden. So two crosses imposed upon each other, not a single cross rooted to the spot. It is through bring connected to others and not reaching for an invisible ideal that helps to give one purpose and something to strive towards.
The cross to me shows loneliness and isolation. Dying alone save for the idea of “hope, maybe”. Whereas a wheel implies “together we can do this”. There is movement with a wheel, but a cross leaves one staring off into the distance waiting for something the change. Waiting for someone else to do something. There is no agency, no development, no change.
What about a mother? Does a mother have no place to assist her children, or only after she births them is she no longer necessary?
I’m not suggesting running from death, because death is inevitable. But instead trying to do something with the life one has been giving. Our bodies can move, can writhe, can curl, can dance, can crumple, can stretch. Must we stay in the one position, with our feet pinned in place? Our arms always out stretched to the sides? There is no rest, no respite? Must life be a continuation of eternal suffering?
God is in the old testament. Jesus is in the new. The father I refer to is the alive one in the old testament, not the invisible memory of a son speaking about what life would be like once he gets to his dad’s house.
I am very happy for people to subscribe to whatever spiritual or religious belief gives them inner peace. No matter if it is an eastern, western, ascension or materialisation based ideation.
And It is possible to talk about the same person and for people to have different experiences and beliefs about that thing. It is was accounts for personalisation, experience, taste and predilection. For everyone is coloured by their own backstory and personal history.
I believe people should be encouraged to explore what truth is for themselves, learn to trust their inner voices and to question authority. Not to necessarily rebel against everything, but to know their own limitations and boundaries. To know that it is okay to make mistakes and that they will receive assistance and guidance from people who genuinely love and care about each other.
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I think the wheel is a fine image of life. I find the cross speaks more unto the correct orientation and correct action as regards life. Even in the Judeo-Christian worldview, the Old Testament has a whole book focused on the endless cycles of life. (Ecclesiastics, if you’re interested. It is one of my favorites.) But, you either come to the Buddhist idea of escaping the cycles, or you find some way of facing the unavoidable suffering of existence.
The thing I think you may be missing about the cross is it’s not permanent. This is a bit of a rift between Christians, but many crosses are shown as empty, signifying that Jesus did die, but didn’t stay dead. The point is, the cross makes no sense outside of the resurrection. Part of the idea of the cross is to escape eternal suffering by voluntary suffering: to become a living sacrifice.
As far as the feminine, and more particularly, the mother: I know of no other religion which puts a greater emphasis on these virtues than Christianity (not to say there isn’t one out there). Eve is the culmination of creation. Eve, and subsequently all women, is called a helper, a quality God himself claims. Women are shown to be religious leaders in both old and new testaments. The woman caught in adultery shows the double standards women face throughout all time, and Christ’s response is one of love, acceptance, and forgiveness. And to the point, Mary is a key figure in Christianity, and is there when Jesus is crucified.
I too hope that we all, within community and as individuals, seek out and discover the truth.
Since we’re talking images and symbols, and discussing motherhood: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f9/21/d6/f921d660383083205a4cd15f5513bc8e.jpg
(And thank you for talking. I generally find conversations like these impossible online. I hope we can both help
each other discover the truth. Anyway, I’m on pain meds for a toothache, so if this reply is completely idiotic please indulge me.)
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Omg thank you. I’m freaking out here that “k, you’re totally over stepping the bounds! Get back in your cage!” Because people often just want to attack. And I’m not trying to attack per se, but understand and engage through discourse a finer understanding FOR AND FROM both sides of the argument.
I am a lover and student of symbols and semiotics. I am a philosophical atheist, not an atheist not quite a theist. Just.. thinking. Ideas. Formulating my own opinions and ideology about the nature of spirit and metaphysics.
I find the abrahamic cross to be full of other people’s stifling ideology that there is little space to breathe or read or whatever. The cross it me is a symbol that is incomplete. It is part of a bigger picture. It is the structural bone or spine to the feminine round and encompassing.
Ideas are pure, but people often corrupt them and mislead or misrepresent these ideas. Thus the miscommunication and the corruption of these archetypal figures. The stories people relate or associate with the archetypes, the symbols, the means of communication and such.
I might make this an article for my blog if that’s okay. Hehe. Let’s see if I actually write it lol
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I appreciate your article.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for sharing the wonderful good news.
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I believe in God and was raised Catholic. Faith is a private thing to me, and I like keeping it in my heart and not on my sleeve. That’s just how I see it.
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I respect that. It is a very deep and personal thing.
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