The Violence of the Cross is NOT Sacred and it shouldn't be taught to children as such!

There’s nothing like a bloody, anguished Jesus to ruin your religious experience as a child. Did I just say that out loud? Yes I did. If you need to read the above sentence again, please do. 

On the cusp of Bad Friday (you might refer to it as Good Friday, but no day a human dies on a cross should be remembered as a good day), I would like to share a very powerful and haunting story from a childhood trauma survivor. This survivor describes their parent as a monster. As a child, they remember peering at the wretched crucifix in their church, Sunday after Sunday. They remember vividly kneeling beneath Jesus’ bloodied body and asking, why would they let this happen to you? Soon the violence of their home was mirrored each Sunday in church as they peered up at the crucifix hanging above the altar. As an adult, even after years of therapy, they have been unable to separate the domestic violence they survived from the vision of Jesus crucified. 

Imagine the imprint the crucifixion has on young minds. If our salvation comes from Jesus’s crucifixion, then the crucifix teaches children that violence is good. Worse, it teaches them that violence is sacred. For two millennia, the church has blessed violence and elevated it to the sacred. And we have exposed generations of children to this unholy endorsement of unholy violence.
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Christianity is so often associated with wholesomeness and a sanitary innocence. Children raised in “Christian homes” would never watch an R-rated movie. Instead, they are introduced to clean images of faith: pristine children running through sunny fields to attend church, happy families praying before bed, and all problems neatly resolved at the end of the movie.

It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it? Such sanitary images of Jesus and wholesome images of living--- in a faith tradition that divinizes violence. Do you disagree? If you are adamant that the church does not divinize violence, can you please explain why churches are filled with 14 different venerations of the cross that depict every step of the horrifying crucifixion?

The worship of the cross idolizes violence. 

I have a friend who wears a “lethal injection Jesus” instead of a cross around her neck. Yes, you read that correctly. She refuses to pretend the cross is sacred. By offering an alternative image of Jesus' death, not by crucifixion but by lethal injection, this alarming necklace states the truth: Jesus died by state sponsored execution. There is nothing sacred, nothing holy, nothing acceptable about such a violent death.

Then how are we to mark this significant day in the Holy Week story? Simply with the truth. Jesus died a terrible death at the hands of unjust power. That death cannot and should not be venerated as holy. It should be remembered for what it was: horrifyingly cruel. Recognizing the truth of the crucifixion makes God’s resurrecting and transformative love on Easter morn even more powerful.

What should we do with our children on Bad Friday? First, please don’t tell them that a loving prophet was tortured to death to save us from our sins. Second, without question, throw out all of the bloody images of Jesus please! Yes! I would rather destroy thousands of crucifixes than have one more child learn from an early age that violence is sacred. I would also encourage families and religious leaders/educators to teach children the entire story of Holy Week. When it is time to teach children about Friday, name the horror of the cross, making sure children understand that Jesus’ death was awful and wrong. Tell them that God had a different idea about power; that God used God’s power for love. This love is the answer to the violence of the cross, and this love is infinitely more powerful than the cross. 
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That’s where we will find our healing---not in the violence of the cross, but in the miracle of the resurrection; not in useless suffering, but in creative hope; not in the power of empire, but in a community of love. We cannot celebrate the death of an innocent, beautiful man, but we can celebrate God’s victory over the machinations of evil. Please join me in changing the way we tell the story this Friday. 

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