A Choice of Crosses

This is a continuation of “God Abandoned by God” below.

SOME WILL SAY that a theology of the cross is just another choice among many. 

I suppose you could have a Christ who is a Moses, Elijah, or one of the prophets and have a perfectly respectable religion that fulfills all the requirements of religion in society. The same with Christ who is John the Baptist redux. Even Peter's “You are the Christ-Christ” is perfectly suitable to the moods and needs of many in the world.

As long as Christ is seen as a continuation or even a projection of the past, any Christ will do and will attract the hearts and minds of the people. It is simply a matter of personal choice or personal relevance. And a choice of one is always relative to the choices of others, all are of equal value, and each has an equal claim on truth that cannot be debated because one's truth is as valid as the truth of the other.

Jesus said, “The Son of man must suffer many things, be rejected, and be killed and on the third day rise.” There is a finality there, a contingency that cuts off any discussion of choice or relevance of one's truth. “The Son of man must suffer” declares that the choices have already been made. Jesus becomes the end of choice, the end of preference, the end of religion.

Remain with your favorite brand of Christ and you will die with him. “Take up your cross” and follow him and you will follow him all the way through the suffering and death to the third day. Ultimately, one's belief is not a choice, nor does it belong solely to the individual. To take up the cross and follow, is to place all choices and faith in one who is more than anyone's faith and is more than the sum of everyone's experience or faith.

At the cross, God not only abandoned Jesus, all of humanity's religious choices were also abandoned; all the hopes and dreams of religious humans were crushed.