Loving the Cross

The speaker's words were all over the map, spiritually speaking. One day in our conversation s/he sounded like a typical evangelical believer (whatever that sounds like); another, the modern generic Christian; yet another, self-help humanism; and at times, New Age. Was s/he a confused believer, a seeker, a deceiver? Was there any way to know, other than trusting that God knew his heart?

Then the words came to me: Does s/he love the cross? I was shocked. I didn't know, of course, what was in the person's heart. The question was really more about me than that individual. Sometimes God does that to me - gets me thinking hard about something related to another person, then turns the tables. I knew the question was really Do YOU love the cross?

C.J. Mahaney said it best: "We never move on from the cross, only into a deeper understanding of it." God knows me - He knows that I am prone to over-intellectualization, to paralysis by analysis, and to trying to find even a shred of something that sounds like what I want to hear from someone I am praying for. And so He brings me back with some regularity to what really matters. Paul called it "the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ."

Without the cross, all the worst thoughts of nihilism and fatalism are true. We really are hard-wired to self-destruct, and the best efforts of people will only have a limited effect. Or to quote those great fatalist singers, the Hee Haw gang, "Gloom, despair, and agony on me//Deep dark depression, excessive misery."

Without the cross, all we have is punitive justice. Without the cross, only a totalitarian, highly regulated government works. Without the cross, we are stuck in Ecclesiastes forever: "Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless."

But hallelujah - we are not without the cross.

With the cross, we have hope. With the cross, change is possible. With the cross, we can work for societal progress, knowing that even unbelievers benefit when believers live in the land. With the cross, we realize that common grace which benefits everyone and the special grace that believers should carry with them wherever we go. With the cross, we can have restorative justice, democratic government, and the promise that nothing is meaningless but instead, "All things work together for good to them that know the Lord."

Without the cross, all we have is the Fall. With the cross, we have redemption.

The speaker had none of the cross in his words to me that day. I had to determine to pray for my friend more specifically - not to get answers to many questions, but to would grow to love the cross.

It's foolishness to the world. But it's life to you and me.