JESUS TOLD US TO TAKE UP CROSS
Focolare Word of Life, March 2015
The cross, the ‘daily’ cross as Luke’s gospel calls it (Lk 9:23), can have a
thousand faces: an illness, a job loss, the inability to sort out family or work
problems, the sense of failure in being unable to create genuine relationships,
the feeling of impotence before the world’s massive conflicts, indignation at
the recurrent scandals of society… The cross does not need to be sought, it
comes on its own, perhaps when we least expect it and in ways we would never
have imagined.
Jesus invites us to ‘take it up’, not resigning ourselves to endure it as an
evil we cannot avoid, not letting it come down on us and crush us, not even
putting up with it by acting with stoicism and detachment. Instead welcome it as
a sharing in his cross, as a possibility of being his disciples even in those
situations and live in communion with him even in that suffering, because he
first took our cross on his shoulders. In every suffering, whatever it may be,
we can thus find Jesus who has already made it his own.
Fabio Ciardi
Christianity is not just about Jesus’ cross but about us taking up our cross
daily to follow him. It is not enough to take up the cross. It has to be taken
up in an attitude of, “This is the will of Jesus and God and I accept this cross
because this is so.” That is fanaticism because the cross should be accepted for
your own sake not theirs. Yet Jesus made it clear that the cross is to be
carried for him and God. But what if Jesus was a fraud and there is no God?
Jesus told the apostles that he was giving them a new commandment to love one
another just as he has loved them (John 13:34). Since God had commanded all to
love one another as themselves and to love him above all things Jesus cannot
mean anything like normal love. He must mean that as he loves his disciples
enough to die for them so they must do the same. But there is only one way to
prove you manage to keep this commandment and that is by courting martyrdom so
Jesus is commanding bloodshed.
In Mark 8 he said that anybody who calls himself his disciple must take up his
cross and follow him for whoever loves his life will lose it and whoever hates
his life will keep it. If losing your life was final Jesus would not have asked
you to suffer so much so it must be dead serious. Whoever prefers earth to God
and Heaven will lose his life on earth and in Heaven. He means that whoever
hates their life on earth and chooses life with God will find life with God
forever. He is not saying that you must reject temporal life totally but he
means that you must live your life on earth for God and nothing else. Though you
live on earth you want God and that is what you live for. Cross denotes a slow
and agonising execution.
This rule was just pure cruelty for he did not command his disciples to fast all
the time like John’s did. In effect, he told them to love their lives.
Jesus was saying that if we don’t get ourselves into big trouble and even get
killed for him and set the stage for these things to happen we will not enter
heavenly happiness. The cross is carried to the place of death and execution and
disgrace. Jesus said that he would carry his cross to his death and we should do
the same if we are his. The apostles were not all crucified so is cross just a
symbol for persecution unto death? Jesus is not saying that they will be
crucified but that if they are lucky enough to be martyred they should be. They
are to carry the cross in hope of it.
The apostles worked in places of danger when they would have been safer
elsewhere proving that Jesus wants people to become martyrs.
Crosses mean crosses and not burdens.
If he had just meant that we must carry our everyday crosses the way many
interpret it, he would have used the word burdens instead of cross.
We may answer that he did not mean that. He told us to love a life with God on
earth which means that the cross is a symbol for burden. But that life is meant
to be used to sacrifice yourself daily until you make the ultimate sacrifice,
death. He is saying that if you don’t bring martyrdom on your head you are not
loving your life with God on earth because you are not loving God.
Another objection is that the New Testament in Luke says that we must bear our
cross every day so that the cross must mean the little and large upsets of
everyday life and not something that takes you to your death. But Jesus carried
his cross for several minutes to Calvary and we have to carry our cross for
every day until the Devil’s emissaries hate us so much that they kill us and we
die for Jesus. If Christians or the Jews Jesus approves of as his followers are
being crucified you could tell them to carry their cross every day though each
one carries it only for a few hours. Luke can still be taken literally. Pilate
had Palestine littered with crosses.
A happy person is not a true Christian for Christians are supposed to make
enemies like Jesus did. He said that a curse was on anybody who was well liked.
Jesus said in
Matthew 10:28 that you must not fear those who can kill your body
but the one who can kill your body and soul in Hell. Is this
him Satan? In Matthew 10:25, 26 speaks of Satan and his demons and
advises his disciples to place no fear in them. God then is
the one who kills body and soul in Gehenna and is to be feared.
With that picture of God, he might be capable of throwing you in
prison forever. This shows how literal his warning that you
are doing something wrong if you cannot face an actual cross on
suffer on if it is presented to you is.
Matthew 10:31 makes Jesus tell the apostles to flee from one town where they are
persecuted to a safer one. This does not contradict Mark 8 where he asks us to
carry our cross after him. Jesus told us to live to carry the cross and then die
for him which means that we must only die when there is no escape. He did not
drag the apostles with him to Golgotha.
Jesus allegedly died for his faith. If so, he knew that his terrible death was
coming and did nothing to avoid it – which the gospels say - but embraced it
with the passion of a lover. So, he expects us to do the same. His death
resembles the death of one who dies to increase the power of evil in the world.
His death is more likely to be meant as a bad example for us that he hopes will
destroy us than to be meant to save us from sin. The doctrine that Jesus saved
us by his death is full of holes and nobody could honestly believe it. We don’t
even have any evidence that Jesus ever was crucified.
Even Jesus’ doctrine that he came to reveal God to us is a weapon of destruction
for people for it leads to death.
The doctrine that God has spoken to us infers that if we lie for a serious
reason and that is right then we cannot trust God who revealed the faith to us
for he has such mysterious ways that he could tell us a lie for some purpose we
cannot understand. So approval of lies or the toleration of error infer that
taking revelation seriously is evil. Jesus certainly did expect us to take
revealed religion so seriously that we had to invest it with ultimate
importance. So, if lies are right we are to die for what may be lies. If lies
are always wrong then we are to die rather than to lie or to encourage
deception. If I believe that Jesus is the son of God and I am asked to deny him
or to foster some deception about him or his ways then I have to get killed or I
have to kill myself if there is no other way to avoid the denial or deception.
Nobody can deny that faith in Christ is faith in a murderer.
BOOKS CONSULTED
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas. Dublin, 1995
Christ and Violence, Ronald J Sider, Herald Press, Scottdale, Ontario, 1979
Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1969
Moral Philosophy, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stoneyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans,
Green and Co, London, 1912
Objections to Christian Belief, DM Mackinnon, HA Williams, AR Vidler and JS
Bezzant, Constable, London, 1963
Putting Away Childish Things, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, HarperCollins, San Francisco,
1994
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1974
Robert Schuller, Satellite Saint or High Flying Heretic, Cecil Andrews, Take
Heed Publications, Belfast
The Hard Sayings of Jesus, FF Bruce Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1983
The Resurrection Factor, Josh McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks,
1993
The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London,
1905
Why I am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell, Touchstone Books, Simon and
Schuster, New York, undated
The WWW
Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire by Richard Carrier
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html
THIS SITE ARGUES THAT JESUS WAS EVIL AND WAS NOT A GOOD EXAMPLE
www.nobeliefs.com/jesus.htm
