Symbols of the Cross: what does it mean?

When speaking of contradictions in the Christian faith, we had an interesting discussion on the symbol of the cross in the theology lecture at Morling on 20 Sept. Some people expressed strong disagreement with the lecturer, but anyway, here's what she was talking about: 

Symbols of the Cross: what does it mean?

At Jesus’ time: Despair, humiliation, shame.

As a jewellery: might mean or not mean anything about Christianity, depending on the person wearing it.

In hospitals, etc: A sense of rescue.

The church.

 

Exodus 33: Moses knew they were a bunch of ex-slaves and the only distinguishing mark is God’s presence. His greatest crisis was when Aaron made the golden cow: even his closest co-worker is involved in idol worship. Moses begs to be made certain of God’s presence in his mission, or at least to see and know that God is there. It is a despairing cry for faith. God tells Moses that he shall never see his face, only his back: and that is his only certainty. “You will see me pass by”. God is not showing himself in sight. It comes in the form of the visible back, and requires faith, to see that and say this is God. Nobody deserves God’s mercy, compassion or goodness. Yet God says “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion”. Luther interprets ‘the back parts of God’ to mean the despair and anguish of the absence of God, of being forsaken by God, of the contradictions of life: in short, the cross. Luther taught that God himself confronts us in person and makes his presence near in and through defeat, sorrow, pain, humiliation, anguish, failure, sin and death. The ‘contrary things’ of failure, sin and death constitute the raw material which God transforms into his own self in the human heart. God reveals Himself in this contrary form.

‘A picture held us captive’, wrote the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as he discussed the remarkable power of symbols over the way in which we think and try to understand the world. Our understanding of the world revolves around ‘pictures’ which seem to hold the key by which the mystery of life may be unlocked. At the centre of the Christian faith lies a picture… dominated by the symbol of the cross. Why is it that at the centre of a faith in a loving God lies a symbol of death and despair – the dreadful picture of a man dying through crucifixion? Yet often times we want to beautify the cross.

 

How does the cross affect how we do missions today? We are quite cross focused, in hymns, art, architecture, literature etc. At times it can be cliché. What is it that we do in church today that imitates the way of the cross? Baptism? Communion? The cross has lost its original meaning: the one we called saviour died in the most humiliating way, and that was the way he died for our sins. Following the way of Jesus means I too am willing to put myself out there for the same shame/humiliation/despair. The church today is not like this. You can’t have resurrection without the cross. The risen Jesus said to Saul: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” The way of the cross is still the mode of operation. The resurrection is a testing point: We whitewashed the content of our faith, and too much emphasis on realised eschatology, because we are living in places where we are not humiliated/discriminated against because we are Christians. Our experiences do not allow us to grapple with the centre of the reality of the cross: Offering our bodies as living sacrifices. There’s nothing attractive about sacrifice, it’s bloody, smelly, etc. It is a brutal struggle with our will, so that we can surrender all to God. We are getting quite far away from what the cross meant these days. It is faith in the resurrection of Jesus no matter how dismal the current circumstances. We have to find ways to experience the reality of the cross. The most difficult thing the prophets had to do is not just to hear God, but to engage with God’s emotions. If we were interceding on behalf of people who are suffering, we have to do it not just because we know these facts, but we are trying to grapple with God’s emotions for these people.

In Mark 8, Peter confessed when he saw Jesus performing all sorts of miracles. But then when Jesus predicts his death, Peter rebuked Jesus. Jesus then rebuked Peter. Satan is tempting Jesus: You don’t have to go to the cross, just fall down and God will catch you. These are the temptations laid before us in the church in the centuries. Often we are like Peter, we like to see our dreams realised and get angry when they don’t. The centurion’s confession is the true confession. There are people mocking Christians around us but that’s benign compared to what’s happening around the world. What we can do is to pray and ask God to teach us what the reality of the cross means.

 

On the day of her induction on 25 Sept, our church’s missionary Sunny posted this message:

"Before His crucifixion, the Son of God was stripped naked, beaten until almost unrecognizable, whipped, scorned and mocked, crowned with thorns, and spit on contemptuously. Abused and ridiculed by heartless men, he was treated worse than an animal. Then, nearly unconscious from blood loss, he was forced to drag a cumbersome cross up a hill, was nailed to it, and was left to die the slow, excruciating torture of death by crucifixion. While his lifeblood drained out, hecklers stood by and shouted insults, making fun of his pain and challenging his claim to be God. Jesus could have saved himself, but then he could not have saved us! God allowed and endured such ghastly, evil mistreatment, so we could be spared from eternity in hell, and we could share in His glory forever! Jesus gave up everything so we could have everything. He died so we could live forever. That alone is worthy of our continual thanks and praise. Never again should we wonder what we have to be thankful for" (Warren, R. 2002).

And this week, as we approach year Rosh Hashana of year 5777, I remembered the Jerusalem cross I bought a year ago on the day of the Jerusalem March, which really got me thinking about the symbol of the cross.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_cross

It is also important to remember that Christian theology ought not be about wrestling with ideas, but about wrestling with the living God. There is every danger that the academic theologian will be trapped in what Karl Barth called an ‘idolatry of concepts’. But the Christian faith is not first and foremost about ideas or concepts, even though it may give rise to them. At its heart lies not an idea or a concept but an event in human history: the living God calling people to faith in him. So central is the cross to Christianity that if God is not revealed in and involved with it, Christian faith must be recognised as a delusion. Here is the living God who makes himself available for our acceptance or rejection in the crucified Christ. The cross of Christ is the point of reference for Christian faith.

References:

McGrath, Alister E. The Mystery of the Cross. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990.

Miyon Chung, Theology 602 lecture, Morling College.

From repentance to hope

(notes taken from Donald Capps’ two books: 1) Agents of Hope and 2) Pastoral Care: A thematic approach.)

There are three attitudes where, once internalised and well established, poses a powerful threat to the maintenance of a hopeful attitude toward life: despair, apathy and shame.[1]

Despair is the perception that what is wanted will not happen, the sense that what is realisable for others is not realisable for me, in spite of the fact that I very much desire it.[2] It essentially takes two forms: It may be projected outward in the form of disgust directed against other persons or institutions, or it may be deeply internalised in the form of depression. What makes it so difficult to combat is that it feeds on itself in a downward spiral of hopelessness. It involves the perception that the future, already narrowed, is foreshortened, either because it is too late to start over, or because the future is blocked.[3] In despair, we place a great deal of blame on ourselves for the failure of our hopes to materialise. It is our deficiency, the inadequacy of our own skills and abilities, which is primarily responsible for the frustration of our hopes.[4] It is only when one recognises the grace of God that our hopes are kept alive.[5]

Apathy is the state of desirelessness together with a strong element of “not caring” about what is happening around us, to us, or within us.[6] Humans are by nature desiring beings since we are always experiencing the presence of an absence. Apathy is a condition that is the very antithesis of human nature.[7] It sees no meaningful connection between short-term activities and long-term goals, eg. I will become my father’s successor as the CEO of the family business when he eventually retires.[8] The sociopathic personality is one who have no realisable hopes beyond the most immediate present. Even short-term desires are difficult to entertain because there are no long-term aspirations or desires to which these more immediate desires are related. The sociopath, beginning in childhood, has never had much hope for the long-term future and is therefore “geared primarily to getting immediate gratification in the present and near future.”[9] Boredom and indifference are characteristics of apathy, because they have ceased to love: no love for the other, no love for self, and no love for the world of nearly infinite possibility. Perhaps the only way for apathetic selves to find hope again is to rekindle the fires of love that have long since been extinguished, for love is the ultimate source of all desire.[10]

Shame is the painful realisation that events have in fact turned out very differently from what was hoped for and confidently expected. Another words, we have made a serious misprojection of ourselves.[11] In fact, the pain of realising that we have been wrong, stupid, or naïve, that we have assumed too much, is usually considered punishment enough. And we may have invested a lot in these hoped-for outcomes.[12]

In summary, the three major threats to the maintenance of a hopeful attitude in life. Despair occurs when we have reason to believe that what we desire so much to come about is not likely to occur after all. Apathy occurs when we no longer invest desire in anything that is happening to us, and it usually results from the fact that the future is already determined. Shame occurs when what we confidently expected to happen does not occur and we are faced with the painful realisation that we put our trust and confidence in a reality that was not there.[13] What is so devastating about these threats to hope is not only that it makes us more reluctant to entertain specific hopes, but that we allow them to affect our basic sense of who we are, our very selfhood. The capacity to hope is the core of human selfhood, and this is why despair, apathy, and shame are so destructive of the human self.[14]

Three attitudes that undergird hope are trust, patience, and modesty.

The general meaning of trust is a confident expectation, anticipation, or hope for the future. Another more specific meaning is a firm belief or confidence in the honest, integrity, relationship, or justice of another person or thing.[15] It is like the “general state of trust” found among infants where they have learned to rely on the sameness and continuity of the outer providers.[16] Another meaning of trust involves the act of entrusting something of value to us into the hand of another person or institution, eg. entrusting our children to the care of teachers and schools. We have relinquished control over the fate or future of what is of value to us by entrusting it to the care of the other. Entrusting is a voluntary act.[17] Fear is the experience that threatens our natural disposition to trust and our willingness to entrust ourselves and that is dear to us to another. The source of fear can be outside of us as the world is not a uniformly safe place to be. It may also be due to the fact that persons on whom we must rely are unreliable or even abusive.[18] In order to hope, we must have the experience of trust.[19]

Patience is concerned with keeping hopes alive. It is the will or ability to wait or endure without complaint; and it is steadiness, endurance, or perseverance in performing a task. One is to wait in an uncomplaining manner, accepting and serene. Patience is what we develop by engaging in difficult tasks without giving up: steadiness, endurance, perseverance.[20] Frustration is the experience that creates the need for patients. Basic to apathy is the experience of frustration and patience is the human capacity to enable us to endure it. Patience is the assurance that the hoped-for outcome is worth the frustration and therefore keeps us steadfast in our hope.[21] As patience develops into an enduring attitude, it, in turn, enables us to keep our sense of frustration at manageable levels so that we do not abandon our hopes.[22]

Modesty the avoidance of excesses or extremes, whereby we remain situated within the real world and do not try to distance ourselves from it. It is a self-referential statement about ourselves where in hoping, we try to avoid the self-deception that occurs when we take leave of the real world and enter a fantasy world.[23] It is an appropriate reaction to the failure of hope to materialise and a positive alternative to shame. By recognising our place in the world and accepting the fact that our hopes are vulnerable to events and circumstances beyond our power to control, an attitude of modesty regarding ourselves can emerge which fortifies us against shame. Our power to influence and control events is necessarily limited, as we are not omniscient beings who are able to anticipate everything that may or may not happen in the future, and we will continue to hope in spite of this knowledge.[24]

Because we trust, we are able to exercise greater patience. Because our attitude is one of modesty, we are conscious of the necessity of trust. These, then, are not discrete virtues, but a system of dispositions that support and enhance one another. Most importantly, the three of them together assume a life of their own and sustain the hopeful self even as specific hopes may go unrealised.[25]

The meaning any event has for us depends upon the frame in which we perceive it. When we change the frame, we change the meaning. Reframing is changing the frame in which a person perceives events in order to change the meaning. When the meaning changes, the person’s responses and behaviours also change. There are two reframing methods in which pastors may use to encourage hopefulness. One is the method of envisioning the future, the other is the method of revising the past. The first method encourages us to take a future persepective on the present. The second invites us to locate our past with a new frame, thereby revising the meaning it has held for us, and thus “changing” the past from a basis for hopelessness into a basis and resource for hopefulness.[26] Revisiting and rebiographing it is one way of reframing. One possible meaning of repentance is that one’s sinful past is blotted out, like an erased debt. Another is that one’s sinful past is rectified. The story of Joseph is a biblical example of rebiographing[27], whereby he turned his brothers’ act of betrayal into a “useful event for humanity”, a viable method of reframing because it is grounded in the boundless mercy of God, who is able to take sinful actions that we or others committed in the past and make them something better than we would ever have imagined. Therefore, rebiographing makes the past as open and possibility-filled as the future.[28]

Theological themes in pastoral counselling:

l   Providence: trust vs. mistrust. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense that the world is under God’s guidance and therefore trustworthy. The psychosocial theme concerns the counselee’s sense of being able to rely on the sameness and continuity of other providers.

l   Grace or gratefulness: autonomy vs. shame and self-doubt. The theological theme recognises that the counselee often rejects the kindness and generosity of others[29] because he has an excessive sense of his own unworthiness. The psychological theme focuses on the counselee’s capacity to appropriate the goodwill of others when he is not overcome with feelings of shame and self-doubt.

l   Repentance: Initiative vs. guilt. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s acceptance of an appropriate level of moral responsibility for his situation. The psychosocial theme focuses on the counselee’s capacity not to allow himself to become immobilised by guilt on the one hand or to display excessive self-righteousness on the other.

l   Vocation: industry vs. inferiority. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense of purpose, dedication, personal competence and effectiveness.[30] The psychosocial theme centres on the counselee’s capacity to participate in a productive situation and bring it to completion.

l   Faith: identity vs identity diffusion. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s affirmative attitude toward life; his religious proclivities as widening his scope of engagement. The psychosocial theme centres on the counselee’s desire to affirm and be affirmed by others; it manifests itself in a concern to integrate one’s experiences to date into a widening radius of psychosocial commitments and expressions of fidelity.

l   Communion: intimacy vs. isolation. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense of being accepted into social groups that matter to him. The psychosocial theme focuses on the counselee’s capacity to commit himself to concrete affiliations, even though they may call for significant sacrifices and compromises.

l   Vocation: generativity vs. stagnation. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s sense of purpose, dedication, personal competence, and effectiveness. The psychosocial theme centres on the counselee’s capacity to play a productive role on behalf of other people, especially the younger generation.

l   Awareness of the holy: integrity vs. despair. The theological theme focuses on the counselee’s relationship to powers or forces beyond himself. The psychosocial theme centres on his sense of comradeship with the cultural forces that have shaped his life.[31]

---

[1] Donald Capps, Agents of Hope: A pastoral psychology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 98.

[2] Capps, Agents of Hope, 99.

[3] Capps, Agents of Hope, 105.

[4] Capps, Agents of Hope, 105.

[5] Capps, Agents of Hope, 107.

[6] Capps, Agents of Hope, 107.

[7] Capps, Agents of Hope, 108.

[8] Capps, Agents of Hope, 116.

[9] Frederick Townes Melges, Time and the Inner Future (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982), 187.

[10] Capps, Agents of Hope, 122.

[11] Capps, Agents of Hope, 123.

[12] Capps, Agents of Hope, 125.

[13] Capps, Agents of Hope, 135.

[14] Capps, Agents of Hope, 136.

[15] Capps, Agents of Hope, 138.

[16] Erik H. Erickson, Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), 248.

[17] Capps, Agents of Hope, 141.

[18] Capps, Agents of Hope, 144.

[19] Capps, Agents of Hope, 145.

[20] Capps, Agents of Hope, 148.

[21] Capps, Agents of Hope, 151.

[22] Capps, Agents of Hope, 152.

[23] Capps, Agents of Hope, 156.

[24] Capps, Agents of Hope, 157.

[25] Capps, Agents of Hope, 161.

[26] Capps, Agents of Hope, 165.

[27] Capps, Agents of Hope, 173.

[28] Capps, Agents of Hope, 175.

[29] Donald Capps, Pastoral Care: A Thematic Approach (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 113.

[30] Capps, Pastoral Care, 114.

[31] Capps, Pastoral Care, 115.