Rejecting the Cross

I have sat in many services before angry with the people attending. Some have been adults, some teenagers, but the common thread is a complete disregard for what the Lord did for them…

Some of you might know that Christianity has more common ground with Islam than it does with Judaism. Well one of the major issues the Islamic faith has with Christianity is the idea of God becoming man. In fact, most religions and people for that matter can not fathom a spiritual being becoming flesh and walking among them. And therein lies, in my opinion, a disconnect in a lot of Christ followers’ minds: we don’t realize the impossibility of this.

After all, gods are just beings who watch humans. They chuckle when they trip and they sit around talking about how smart humans think they are - a conversation filled with thunderous laughter no doubt.

The uniqueness of the cross is that my God…the true, one and only, God of gods, King of kings, became man by being born to a virgin. Mary should have been stoned for being pregnant outside of marriage. Jesus really was an illegitimate child in man’s eyes. He was a carpenter. Not a religious scholar, not a prince, not a business world leader, not even above average. God became man.

He pursued sinners. He didn’t care what it looked like to be hanging out with prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, and adulterers - he came to heal the sick, not the healthy.

Are you realizing the ADACITY of this? This is ridiculous. No god would do that for mankind. Not unless He created them, loved them, and wanted to make a way for them to spend eternity with him. Wow.

To top it all off, He humbled himself and was crucified on a cross - a thief’s punishment - even though he was without sin.

So, I sat there, angry at the teenager in front of me who kept turning around and talking with her friends and laughing during the message. I wasn’t angry because of disrespect for the speaker (although that is frustrating too), I was angry because when we forget what Christ did and live complacently, we reject everything he did for us.

We reject the cross.