THE CROSS

THE CROSS

Hugh Fogelman

The pastor at my wife’s church stood up one day and asked the following question. He wanted to know if the members of his congregation knew the symbolism behind the “cross “that they wear as a piece of fine jewelry. The pastor said it was actually a symbol of death. Non-Christians have known this every time they see someone wearing a cross.

Do Christians even know the history of their cross and crucifixion? Did they know that by the 6^th century, representations of the crucifixion became very numerous showing Jesus alive, with open eyes, and no trace of suffering? This was to show that he was victorious over death.

In the 9^th century, Byzantine art began to show a dead Jesus, with closed eyes. This version was adopted in the west in the 13^th century, with an ever-increasing emphasis on his suffering, in accordance with the mysticism of the period (Encyclopedia Britannica).

What is important to most Christians is not the shape of the cross or even the fact that the cross appeared in pagan religions long before Christianity, but to Christians today, it is the meaning of the cross. It is symbolic; that to them through “blind faith,” some sort of atonement is made by the man-god Jesus (god incarnate, Hashem, Allah etc) dying and suffering on the cross for the sins of mankind.

Christians proudly wear cross earrings and necklaces as if they were beautiful. It makes no difference to Christians that the “cross” is an emblem of agony and death ― it represents a public execution, like a gallows, a guillotine, or a gas chamber. To Muslims, it reminds them of the Christian Crusaders and their slaughter of thousands of Muslims. To Jews, the cross is despised and hated because millions of Jews have been made to suffer and be executed under the sign of the cross. To freethinkers the cross represents pure unadulterated ignorance.

Think about it! Christians will say the “cross” represents their man-god dying and being resurrected back to life. If he hand been hanged would they wear a hangman’s noose to also represent that? Or perhaps, if Jesus had been beheaded; would a Christian wear “sword” or "axe" jewelry dangling from ones ears or neck?

Unwittingly Christians who flaunt the cross are advertising pagan religions. The Dictionary of the Bible, by John D. Davis, states:

“The pre-Christian cross of one form or another was in use as a sacred symbol among the Chaldeans, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians and many other oriental nations. The Spaniards, in the 16^th century, found it also among the Indians of Mexico and Peru, but its symbolic teaching was quite different from that which we now associate with the “cross.”

In other words, long before Christianity, the cross was in wide-spread use on several continents and had nothing to do with the man-god Jesus.

The outside world asks; "Why does Christianity have so many reminders of blood imagery in their songs plus they hang a murder instrument around their necks?" Is this the only way they can get their message across?

Or is this yet another subliminal message to either believe in their demigod, or this will happen to you?

"Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people." -Thomas Edison (1847-1931), quoted by Joseph Lewis from a personal conversation

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