Because according to the Christian faith, the death on the cross is the moment of victory. The divide-by-zero that absolves sin.
So, I’m no theologian, but I did grow up studying this stuff quite a bit. Here’s a probably-flawed explanation of my understanding of the teaching.
God created the world, and the creation fell short of his image for it. That’s what “sin” is, a falling-short-of-perfection. God’s perfect nature requires perfection for communion with his creation, so in an attempt to bring humanity back into communion with him, Jesus (who is both God and human) comes to live among the creation, lives a perfect life, and is killed. The teaching is that death is a result of imperfection, so the death of someone with human nature who was perfect wipes out the “cost” of sin.
So humans are again able to be connected with their Creator, despite the fact that none of them are perfect.
Christians are encouraged to follow the laws of scripture not because failure to do so will damn them, but because said laws can be good for them. The Bible outright says humans cannot get to heaven through their actions. So when Christians get all high and mighty about sin, they’re missing the point entirely. (Or, perhaps, they’re following what they’ve been taught by people who use religion to control people.)
It frustrates me to see Christians championing anti-LGBT causes and whatnot. Like, I don’t care if you think it’s sinful, the entire point of the religion is that everyone is sinful. The Bible is clear on this. Jesus came for sinners. After all, if people were perfect they wouldn’t need a savior in this system.
Someone can probably do a better, more theologically consistent job explaining this, but that’s my understanding.
As a bored kid in church, this is a question I pondered many times. Why would we choose to honor the method of torture that caused his death?
I always think of Jesus in the electric chair and followers wearing little “electric chairs” on a necklace
it’s to honor the sacrifice he made to abscond humanity of their sins.
Yeah, that doesn’t make sense either. How does dying by torture “absolve” (the word you were reaching for) humankind from their “sins,” and what sins are they talking about anyway? Sins are only religious rules, and if religion is a just a human construct, then they aren’t valid anyway.
I’ve never seen a religious message of any kind that made logical sense.
IDK and idc. I went to a nun school and I wasn’t convinced either but that’s what I was told it meant
If God is all powerful, couldn’t he just do that without all the bloody, painful, torture part???
That’s what I wondered about.
The Cristian god prolly just enjoys a good drama
he could have just, you know, forgiven them. Like he preached. If I kill myself over a grudge I hold towards you, that just makes me an idiot. And, If also I go around preaching forgiveness to everyone else, a hypocrite
I like crucifixes, i study their design and craftsmanship while the Karen wearing it is berating me at work and threatening to call my manager.
Y’ever think about how if Jesus died by a guillotine there’d be guillotines everywhere
You think if he was shot the gun manufacturer would use that in their advertising?
Many Christian, but non Catholic denominations definitely do not use, or phased out the usage, of crosses ( also fish symbols/religious stamps/rosaries and so on) as they understand this fact
Also they understand that Matthew 16:24 is referring to a Stavros/stauros, literally a wooden torture stake/pole, in allegory to taking a heavy responsibility, in general, as previous context shows that spreading the lord’s message, with the difficulties it may bring, to extract a heavy toll on the average person’s life, up to the point of having to sacrifice said life
They also understand that even thought the old law have been abolished, the spirit of it keeps on on many of their aspects, so no worshipping idols of any kind (imaginary or physical) is seen as the practical approach
Sam Kinison had a routine where he was pretending to be Jesus explaining why he hadn’t returned yet: “yeah, I’ll be back as soon as I can PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN! OH OHHHHHHHH!”
The government just declassified documents that describe the first time humans made contact with an alien race. We found out that not only do the aliens know about Jesus, he revisits them every year for a big celebration. "Every year?” the humans asked, “We’ve been waiting for him to come back for over 2000 years! How did you get him to return?”
“I don’t know, we’re just friends. The first time he visited, we gave him a big bag of our finest chocolates. What did you guys do?”
The cross is important because Christ’s death was a Sacrifice…in a similar way to offering a live animal on an altar, or offering incense to a god. Its this sacrifice (his crucifixion) that saves us.
As an atheist I appreciate that Jesus was willing to die for what he believed in. He saw injustice in the world and took action even at the cost of himself. That’s what I see in the cross.
But that’s not why he died. He didn’t take a bullet for his friend, he freely offered himself as a sacrifice for our sin. This is what saves us from unending death. That’s why the cross is important. His death was more similar to an Animal that is sacrificed by the local shaman then a soldier who gets killed fighting against terrorists.
He died because he was put to death for criticizing the religious elites. There is no divinity that creates purpose in people’s lives and deaths.
from the unending death that he himself (holy trinity and all that) would have inflicted upon you.
As an old guy, I still do not understand how Jesus being tortured to death somehow absolves all our “sins” (whatever that means), and keeps us from “unending death” (whatever that means). Nothing about religion, ANY religion, makes sense.
I am open-minded enough to acknowledge that we know almost nothing about the Universe, and there may be some entity beyond our puny human comprehension, but ALL religion is simply a clumsy human construct attempting to make the unexplainable understandable for humans that require protection from the scary mysteries of the Universe.
Shouldn’t you rephrase that? If what you say is correct, isn’t Jesus an animal who willingly offered itself up as sacrifice to the local shaman, rather than simply bring sacrificed?
He offered himself To the Jewish Priests and Religious leaders who condemned him. Why do you think he’s called the Lamb of God? Lambs got sacrificed in his day!
Did he really, or did he get betrayed and then captured?
He KNEW he was going to be betrayed. That’s in Scripture. Yet he allowed himself to be handed over to fulfill what was written and to be a Sacrifice for our sins.
Why though? Why not just give yourself up, and prevent your friends from getting guiltridden in the process?
Sounds like a bad friend to me.
Exactly. And the sacrifice refers not to Jesus’s suffering and persecution, but what humanity gave up in that sacrifice - God’s active, personal presence on Earth.
If you’re not religious, it all means nothing,of course.
Fairy tales
I think that is actually a terrible deal. He could probably have just waved any sin away or something.
Oh well, don’t believe in it anyway.
Keeping God away from Earth is a good idea. The God that is described in the Bible is a monster.
Jesus though was basically a socialist with some caveats
deleted by creator
the whole point of Christianity is that Jesus sacrificed himself to absolve humanity of the original sin. The cross represents the sacrifice.
If God is all powerful then why not just absolve us from the sin?
If this sacrifice was required, then he is not all powerful or he is into torture pron.
I’m not an expert in the Bible, but I don’t think it really ascribes omnipotency to God. I think it’s better to understand it as God being able to do all that can be done. So He may have limitations, but they are such that no other being can do something that He is unable to do.
From that sense, He is not able to save humanity freely, but he can set forth a process through which He can achieve this goal with some cost. I.e., He can create a divine being (that is either Himself in whole, Himself in part, or a direct descendant of Himself depending on your interpretation) that is able to spread His message and display an act of extreme self-sacrifice.
I don’t really understand exactly what the sacrifice did or what needed to be fixed, but I do think the stories make a lot more sense if you accept that God has some limitations. For instance, I assume that Noah’s flood was his first attempt to fix the problem (by killing everybody except for the most righteous of His creation), but it failed because He can’t do everything and doesn’t know everything. And the story of Jesus was His next attempt to sort things out.
But that’s just me thinking about them as fictional stories that really need to be edited rather than a divine and infallible truth.
Ok…so there are rules that God must obey…so he’s not all powerful, otherwise he would just change the rules
Yeah, but all that comes from Paul not Jesus himself.
Exactly. ALL religion is a human construct to explain stuff that neolithic goatherders didn’t understand. Some of them were a talented storytellers, and made up all that stuff to entertain their bored colleagues.
Yeah, none of that makes sense. How much do you have to disengage your intelligence to somehow believe in that baloney enough to actually rule your life by it? Seriously weird.
And yet having sacrificed himself, he’s now back hanging out with his Dad in heaven and having a great time. That’s not a “sacrifice”, it’s more like a bad time at summer camp.
It was a bad three-day weekend.
Highly suspicious that we elected this representation of this sacrifice without written approval by Jesus himself, ey?
Except earlier it said to have no idols. The cross is an idol. You can appreciate a sacrifice without using the tool that caused such sacrifice as a form of worship. If your father jumped in front of you and died to a gun shot, he sacrificed his life to save you and you would be appreciative. Would you then wear a gun necklace around your neck to show you love your dad and the sacrifice he made for you? By sanctifying his murder weapon?
LIES THEY USED DIE FISHE SYMBOL IN ITS EARLIER LIFESPAN!!!
Read this like he said it
“You think if Jesus comes back he ever wants to see another fucking cross? Thats probably why he hasn’t come back yet. ‘Nope, they’re still wearing crosses.’ That’s like walking up to Jacky Onassis wearing a rifle on your lapel. ‘Just thinking about John, Jacky.’” finger guns
- Bill Hicks
Christianity is a man made religion shaped to control people in which you are supposed to “worship” a really high authority that cannot be questioned.
sounds like the government
“The gubmint wants to take away MAH RAGHTS”
Are their non man made religions I should know about?
I feel like dogs would have a good religion. I wanna subscribe to that.
Most evenings, I sit on my front porch overlooking a quiet pond, and play my guitar for an hour or so, accompanied by birdsong. That’s my religion.
I can only assume you’re human, so that still counts as a man made religion.
Sounds relaxing though, I’d pray to that.
I like the part where they worship me.
if one uses the broad meaning of “religion” then i’d say unorganized ones aren’t really manmade, like hunter-gatherers just vaguely assuming the moon is “a spirit or something i guess” isn’t comparable to christianity or islam.
Nah, that’s actually exactly comparable to Islam and Christianity.
A difference exists in that those sentiments has less implications for daily life. People sharing spiritual speculation about the greater universe with the humility to recognize they have no way of knowing better than anyone else, fine.
I’m not bothered by the faith in something beyond what we can see in and out itself. But the bits where self asserted alignment to a silent but divine authority as a way to decide value and authority among people… There’s the problem.
I do not question the authority of someone’s God, I question the authority of the people claiming that God agrees with them.
The American Christian message: Act like Jesus and we will crucify you too.
Ironically, the cross is a symbol of unjust suffering. Something which the more prominent wearers like to inflict on others.
Everything about Christianity is basically backwards from what Jesus actually fucking said.
No idolatry is the first commandment for a reason. People that worship the idol of the cross have already failed to learn what the religion was to teach.
Basically, look at Republicans. They absolutely worship the flag yet at the same time defile everything the country supposedly stands for.
10 commandments are old testament, new testament says love your neighbor was the most important one.
It also says that Jesus says that none of the old testament laws are abolished.
No, it represents how Jezus died for our sins, so that we can be free to sin as we please.
thank u jesus for letting us do trig
Of course he liked crosses! There was even that one cross he used to hang at.
Nailed it.
I can’t speak for everyone, but when I wear a cross it’s in reference to Matthew 16:24
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
To me the cross is symbolic of finding the courage to live our lives motivated by a radical love in order to overcome the fear of death and pain.
It’s like Goku once said while fighting to save the world “this is the power to go further beyond”
I feel though like wearing a token cross in honor of being told to take up a more literal cross seems like paying lip service to a very serious call to action with very low actual stakes.
Like being told to stand up to the guns of an army to stand firm for justice and then wearing little rifle pendants instead claiming that means you look to live your life consistent with that principle even as you stay well away from actual fighting.
You may personally of course live your life consistent with the values and that is just a symbol, but it’s broadly a symbol that has been cheapened by casual overuse, and to some extent corrupted by folks using it as a symbol of their alignment to God and implied divine authority granted by that association.
Yeah, in my opinion it shows the power consumer culture has to erode the meaning of things. “This symbol used to stand for something, but it got too popular and now it’s just slapped on stuff to sell merch.”
It’s a bit like being told to go out into the world and tell everyone about your religion, and you do it by taping a cardboard sheet to your front and back with “Jesus is Lord” written on it.
Haha, I can actually get down with that. Anyone crazy enough to do that is probably a genuine person who’s willing to engage with the insanity of existence.
I was joking, though. There are actually people who wear sandwich boards with religious messages on them, specifically to fulfil the call to proselytise.
They often stand near shops.
I almost respect people who really try to talk to me more for actually fulfilling the spirit of it, rather than the letter.
Potential problem:
The Greek word that is, in basically every English translation rendered as ‘cross’… does not actually specifically mean ‘cross’.
The word is stauros.
What it literally means is roughly a wooden ‘pole’ or ‘stake’, and was colloqiually used at the time to just refer to any configuration of wooden poles upon which one would be crucified… which, while yes, were often in the shape of a cross, they also often weren’t… maybe a T, or an X, or just a straight pole.
It was also used… I don’t think in the New Testament, but other Greek writings from the same time… to just mean large pieces of worked wood used in construction, even just ‘a tree’, though those uses rely a bit more on the surrounding context.
The English ‘crucify’ is built on the assumption that it was an actual cross. In greek, the verb for ‘crucify’ is stauroo, unconjugated; ‘to fasten to a stake or pole.’
… Its kind of like how ‘Matthew’ incorrectly translates the Hebrew word almah into the Greek word for ‘virgin’, when he quotes Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:22-23, to say that Jesus’ birth fulfils prophecy.
Almah, in Hebrew, just means ‘young woman’… basically, of marriage age, so for the time, that would basically be… post-puberty, roughly 14, up to maybe early 20s.
It can mean ‘virgin’, but it does not specifically, necessarily mean ‘virgin’… in roughly the same way in English, right now, a ‘young woman’ could be a vrigin, is probably more likely to be a virgin than an old woman, generally speaking… but it absolutely does not categorically mean ‘virgin’.
That’s definitely the intended meaning of wearing a cross, and a really powerful and important scripture.
It’s worth remembering though that ‘cross’ isn’t the word that Jesus said here but the Greek word recorded is stau·rosʹ which means execution or torture stake and the cross wasn’t a contemporary use for impailment by the Romans, primarily because a stake was a much more painful death than a cross.
The cross was a pagan idol for many centuries before Jesus death and was later rolled into the account of Jesus’ death by the later Christian Church to help with the conversion of those pagans.
Do you have any sources on the claim that it wasn’t a cross and was changed later for pagans? The scripture references “coming down” from the cross which to me would imply the one we typically think of.
Also from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement,
"I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made differently by different [fabricators]; some individuals suspended their victims with heads inverted toward the ground; some drove a stake (stipes) through their excretory organs/genitals; others stretched out their [victims’] arms on a patibulum [cross bar]; I see racks, I see lashes … "
Sounds like Seneca, a figure from exactly this time period confirms the type of cross we think of.
Do you have any sources on the claim that it wasn’t a cross and was changed later for pagans?
No they do not.
There are writings from around ~200 talking about how the letter T and Tau look like the execution cross. Around the same time where the word “σταυρός”(cross) appears in New Testament versions.
The change to the modern/lower case version did start to happen around the time of conversions and suppression of pagans began. But as far as I am aware there is no evidence that was the reason. Specially since it didn’t really take off for a couple of hundred years, and became big with the crusades.
Another good piece of evidence I just thought of is the oldest known depiction of Jesus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito
It seems the claim might originate with Jehovah’s Witnesses in modern times.
