Field Notes from a Religion-Less Christian

January 1, 2022

How Does the Cross Work?

There is the understanding of the saving work of God actually working because of a compassion for us who have been disobedient. The Anselmian Atonement Theory embraces this. What is assumed here is that sin is a breaking of a covenant law.  Sin is a disobedience. Salvation, or rectifying, is a forgiveness that is and can only be instituted by sacrifice on our behalf. And so faith becomes the appreciation for this intervention on our behalf. And preaching becomes this grand admonishment to an ever deeper appreciation for the selfless act of God in and through Jesus on our behalf. 

How wonderful it is that God is so self-less for us!

Of course, this is a smoke-screen to hide the truth, which is, again, of course, that we killed Jesus and would do it again in a heartbeat. 

When we make God the Lawgiver, or the Law itself, we have a metaphysical infrastructure that supports our position as Agent on our own destiny. If and when we repair the breach, even employing God to do the dirty work for us, all is well. God works for us. We are the Owner, the Employer and God works for us. 

If, though, we own nothing, God is set loose. God is rogue. God is the Outlaw. 

This state of affairs, this nakedness and empty-handedness, is simply too painful for us to tolerate. We must respond, lash out, with creating theologies that support our philosophy of self-development and self-enlightenment. 

The biblical narrative is all too easily hijacked to support a theology about the cross which keeps us alive within the law’s superstructure wherein we have a say in the matter of our destiny. If we cannot repair the damage ourselves we can at least participate and change things, make things whole, by believing somebody else has fixed it. 

Contrast this to a theology where the cross alone is our theology (Crux sola est nostra theologia, a phrase Martin Luther employed). When this happens we don’t have God-thinking (theology) about the cross, we only have the starkness and darkness that is the cross itself. The killing of God is our doing and all we are capable of doing and all we actually want to do. We kill God because God does not do our bidding of redeeming the righteous and condemning the wicked. God does not play by our rules and only, instead, gives mercy to the deserving and undeserving alike. 

What dies on the cross is the law, this "metaphysical superstructure." God as the law dies. God dies.  Christ is the end of the law (Romans 10:4). Yes, Jesus dies, but he is the one of mercy who only gives mercy and this one, this mercy one, dies, which means to say retributive justice which would have lashed out and taken no prisoners, that one dies.  Mercy prevails. It is all that is left. The last word is the word of forgiveness. Everything else is literally dead. Mercy does not win because it is better (“oh, how lovely is God’s love!” we like to say because such admiration displays our enlightenment: “we get it! Before we did not see it. Now we do!”) Mercy wins because it is the only thing left standing. 

The cross shuts us up, destroys all recriminations and retributions. Mercy does not win as if there ever was a competition. It rather envelopes and encompasses and embraces all that ever existed and exists. 

And so, I don’t find myself enamored with an appreciation attitude toward God, a spirituality of gratitude. Rather, I am laid bare and find in that darkness only the light of God. In my world’s construction of retribution and payback and earning a place, I find only mercy. And that is simply too good not to be true. I don’t applaud this mercy, as if I am some spectator admiring benevolence. I am more like a sputtering breathless one laying prone on the ground at the water’s edge after drinking desperately, gulping gaspingly the fresh water provided me at the oasis in my desert.