Phil Kershner asks: Why the Cross?
Why Auschwitz? Why the Inquisition? When madness takes over we can’t help but ask why. In fact, we have a moral imperative to ask why. They are the same questions as the question, Why the Cross? When someone asks about Auschwitz or the Inquisition, it is assumed that they do not mean, ‘What did Auschwitz accomplish?’ or ‘What did the Inquisition accomplish?’ In fact, you would think they were a little crazy if they really meant, ‘What did it accomplish?’ Rather, they mean, ‘Why did it come about?’ And that is how it should be with the question, ‘Why the Cross?’ The madness that descended on Golgotha deserves the same moral respect. All deserve the same moral outrage. That a Victor Frankl and others can create meaning out of madness may come later, but surely the first obligation is to cry out with Jesus, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ Oppression, violence and injustice cry out for moral thinking (and response) no matter the theological turf at stake.
Sadly, however, for nearly two thousand years of Christian history, the moral question has been trumped by the utilitarian one, precisely because of the theological turf at stake. The question ‘Why the Cross?’ has unfortunately been taken first and foremost to mean, ‘What did it accomplish?’ For many years I knew there was a simple answer to that question because I grew up in a fundamentalist environment. Every week I heard about the sins of the world washed in the blood of the lamb, Jesus. The simple answer was that the cross made it possible for God to forgive sin. But you didn’t have to be in a fundamentalist church to hear that answer. It was, and still is, proclaimed in most Christian churches.
This theology is now understood by many as a carryover from the ancient practice of slaughtering animals to obtain the forgiveness of God. It was a world-wide phenomenon. But centuries before Jesus, some enlightened Israelites (and no doubt enlightened individuals in other religious traditions also) realised that this was all wrong. Micah, most famously among Israelites perhaps, said God doesn’t want or need your burnt offerings. He wants you to love kindness, do justice and walk humbly. Micah, and others, came to understand that God could forgive freely without demanding a pound of flesh in the process. Jesus himself forgave freely.
That’s what grace means. No strings attached. Nothing, nada, zilch. Any requirement, even belief in Jesus’ death as atonement for our sin, is quid pro quo, tit-for-tat. That’s works righteousness, not grace. The great irony is that Martin Luther never freed us from works righteousness, even though that’s what Protestants like to believe. Belief or faith is mental work. So Luther’s theology is still salvation by works. He simply substituted mental work for physical work.
As I shook the dust of fundamentalism off my feet, the cross came to be nothing more and nothing less than one more instance of a terrible injustice done by the powers-that-be to an innocent victim. The cross differed from Auschwitz and the Inquisition only in that it involved one individual, not thousands or millions (cross here meaning the cross of Christ; in fact, of course, the Romans crucified thousands on their crosses). It was a great tragedy, Jesus’ death on the cross, but it didn’t accomplish anything.
Then I saw the movie Life is Beautiful and everything changed for me. In that incredible movie we see a father protect his son from the horrors of a concentration camp by the use of imagination and humour. He turns their dreary and dangerous lives into a game. And miraculously he pulls it off. From moment to moment one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It is the first Holocaust movie I have ever seen which suggests that humour can trump evil.
One reviewer wrote: ‘I watched this movie with a Holocaust survivor. She said afterward it was the one movie she had seen that did entire justice to the Holocaust, because it showed that the only way to make it through and still be remotely sound in mind was to create a fantasy world for oneself, to convince oneself that what one was experiencing was not reality. This movie does not make light of the Holocaust, it shows what strength of spirit it took to get through it. To remain that light-hearted in the midst of probably the greatest tragedy of the 20th century is strength indeed.’
Another reviewer wrote: ‘Schindler’s List was a phenomenal film, showing the utter horror of the holocaust, but it missed one thing: the notion of hope. No one in Spielberg’s masterpiece continually believes that “life is beautiful”. All we see is the horror, the downfall, the pain. And while that makes for a fantastic dramatic punch, it negates any humour or spirit the prisoners may have had to blanket themselves from the harshness, and this humour surely existed. Guido knows very soon he is going to die. But the love for his son outweighs the need to display hopelessness. If nothing else, he must protect his son. Who here can honestly say they wouldn’t do anything they could to protect their sons/daughters from knowing the biggest evil on Earth? Laughter seeps into any tragedy, if the love for life is there. Anne Frank said something to the effect that “in spite of all this, I still feel people are good in heart.” She had hope. She knew life is beautiful.’
I now began to nibble at the idea that maybe there was an answer to ‘Why the Holocaust?’ other than just ‘Why did it come about?’, while still being careful not to let the utilitarian trump the moral outrage. Jews who survived the Holocaust teach us much about suffering (and not just the famous survivors like Victor Frankl). While clearly the world would be better had the Holocaust never happened (my entry for most banal phrase ever written!), we can see that out of the Holocaust some good may have come. Humour and imagination showed their ability to conquer evil. I wish it hadn’t had to happen, but then I wish for a lot of things. I am reminded of the Rabbi Harold Kushner, who said that the death of his son at a young age made him a better rabbi, but he would gladly give up being a better rabbi to have his son back.
This new line of thought prepared me to understand something written by the philosopher André Comte-Sponville. ‘Even a crucified love is preferable to a triumphant hatred.’1 Jesus on the cross forgives his enemies. He cares for his mother. He comforts a fellow victim on a nearby cross. He proved himself better, more loving, than the system that hated him. Like Guido in Life is Beautiful, he beat the system even in dying.
As former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, writes in Leaving Alexandria, ‘Was that what the story of the dying Jewish carpenter was about? Not about magical rescue and redemption from tragedy, but a picture of tragedy itself, a fiction that gave us the power to endure and not be defeated.’2 It would have been better if Jesus could have lived to a ripe old age and died of natural causes. But he didn’t. And by dying as he did, he managed, as Comte-Sponville suggests, to accomplish something. He showed that love trumps hatred (Holloway’s ‘power to endure’). How ironic that an atheist philosopher may have put it as beautifully as any theologian: ‘Even a crucified love is preferable to a triumphant hatred.’
Perhaps that answers the question ‘Why the Cross?’ as it was originally intended. After two thousand years of Christian history, so much of it wasted on the blood sacrifice of Jesus for our sin, maybe we can begin to talk intelligently about ‘What did it accomplish?’ The triumph of love over hatred.
1. Comte-Sponville, André, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, translated by Nancy Huston (New York: Viking Press, 2007), 204.
2. Holloway, Richard. Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2012), 224.
Phil Kershner is a United Church of Christ pastor in Illinois (USA), where he lives with his wife, Sandee, and daughters, Ashlyn and Lauren.