Scandal

The spiritual life is not what we expect, or even what we are looking for. Neither is God. We want results, the outcomes that we desire, and a God who will make it so. Who would not want their idea of “good” brought about by their God? Isn’t that what gods are for?

To me, the Christian faith is clearly not a human invention precisely because it is centered on the cross. No one would ever think to base everything on a dead God. On the cross God is shown to be utterly powerless in any conventional sense. He is not fixing what is wrong with the world, but becoming a victim of all that hurts me. I want a champion who will defeat my enemies, not end up defeated by them. We all tend to worship power, and if we cannot have it ourselves, we want someone on our side who has it. Blessed are the winners.

This is what Paul calls the “scandal” of the cross. The word translated “stumbling block” (skandalon) is where we get our word.

We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  1 Corinthians 1:23-24

For Paul, the crucified Christ is both power and wisdom, but admittedly a form of power and wisdom that seems the opposite of our normal definitions. We may want to skirt the absurdity and insist the language of the cross implies his resurrection, but we miss the point if we do this. The resurrection is more about God affirming the cross rather than to taking our focus off of it. We are to take up our cross, not an empty tomb.

I should aspire to what the cross means in my own life, while I hope in the resurrection. There is nothing for me to emulate about the empty tomb, but to live a cross-shaped, cruciform, life is the essence of the spiritual life. Being raised with Christ is what happens when I die with him (Romans 6:5). The spiritual life is working on the dying while trusting in the raising. 

The cross is the eminent Christian symbol, not an empty tomb. Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), not the lamb healed from the beginning. The cross may be the epitome of the ludicrous view of a powerless God, but the incarnation is one with it. God becoming human is a descent from power to powerlessness, and the course remains constant until Jesus is dead and buried. 

Jesus knew his way was narrow and few would find it precisely because we are not looking for it. What we are looking for is not a cross but the power to crucify everything we do not like or want. The life of faith and transformation is very difficult because it necessitates going against our instincts toward power and control. If we do start to recognize that we must abandon our preconceived ideas and belief in what is ultimately good and desirable, to find true goodness, this is the work of grace. We would not do this of our own accord.