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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Why I Have a Cross on My Desk
return to main-page of the "Jesus" article
I like simple and unadorned things. I built my own desk and bookcase surround. Nothing fancy. Just a plain plywood top with pine one-by-tens as shelving.
As I sit at my desk, on the bookcase frame just in front of me, I notice a gold-chain cross which I've unceremoniously fastened to the side of my computer screen.
My cross-on-chain is not so unlike that one gracing the neck of that long-ago grad mentioned on page one. But I think the symbolism might be different for me; however, when I was 18, I would have agreed with her view.
I choose the cross as meaningful symbol not because "Jesus died for my sins"; not because God has an anger-management problem that requires blood; not because of Augustine's idea that I was born morally defective. For me, the cross suggests something different.
Jesus, the perfectly developed Man, modeled what every spiritual person is called upon to do. Not many of us will die on a cross, but everyone whose purpose is to honor God, to grow up into a fully-developed human being, will need to live his or her life in pursuit of the truth, even in the face of all manner of adversity. For each individual, this call to the sanctified life will play out differently; and yet, in many respects, it will be the same.
The cross of history was a torture-stake, an object designed to cause not just death but suffering. Each person who commits him or herself to God and truth will come to know the way of the cross - each in his or her own particular way. In this world, dominated by the Small Ego, suffering cannot be avoided.
Jesus' call to discipleship, the way of life and truth, is also a summoning, he said, to carrying one's own torture-stake; that is, doing the right thing despite opposition, concerning which fortitude, in this world, there will be no shortage of opportunity for expression.
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