I have been thinking a lot recently about the cross and how it is understood by Christians. The cross represents a brutal reality as a First Century torture device and the Son of God crucified, a symbol of redemption and salvation for Christians, and most recently, I have been thinking of the cross as a metaphor for Christian relationship.
As a reality, the cross is a gruesomely simple device used by the Roman government in the First Century to slowly and painfully execute criminals, political dissidents, and others who earned the severest contempt of the Roman authorities. It is a means of execution that might be mostly forgotten, but for its use to execute "the author and perfecter of our faith" in the sometime in the 3rd or 4th decade of the First Century. For Christians, the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection is the basis for and the evidence of our reconciliation with God. And, whether historically accurate or not, the symbol of the cross (used to symbolize our redemption) has been portrayed as a vertical plank intersecting a horizontal plank.
And, it is this intersection of the vertical and the horizontal is the basis of the metaphor for Christian relationship that is the subject of these posts.
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