What Does the Cross Mean to You?

[IndigoChild5559]

Crusaders wearing the cross used to take detours on their way to the Holy Land to exterminate Jewish villages in the name of Jesus Christ.

During the pogroms of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Pale of Russia, cross wearing Cossacks killed entire Jewish families as they burned down entire shtetls, shouting "Christ Killers."

For 2000 years, the cross has not been a symbol of love for Jews, but a symbol of fear, oppression, torture, and death.

Today, Christians are working very hard to change this association. It's not going to happen overnight.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Yeah, I sympathize with Jews for that - but they have taken it out on other people - who in history had taken out on them.

 

[David J]

I didn't answer this question appropriately.

"What does the cross mean to you?"

I'm assuming the cross being synonymous with crucifixion.

I find it very odd that the books of Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John don't make this remotely clear. And yet this is the basically the biographical testimony of Jesus - His Ministry is truly undefined. It isn't until the lunatic Paul with the book of Acts can we start forming opinions, or should I say, denominations.

We don't know how sin free we must be by death, how much we must be convinced in belief (faith), how we are to be baptised, how material free we must be, what works we must truly do, etc.

And why does Jesus truly have to die? The people before his time were being saved.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

The cross is the tree of life in Eden. It is the crux of God and Self; the crossroads to immortality through unity with everything else.

 

[Road Warrior]

Crusaders wearing the cross used to take detours on their way to the Holy Land to exterminate Jewish villages in the name of Jesus Christ.

During the pogroms of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Pale of Russia, cross wearing Cossacks killed entire Jewish families as they burned down entire shtetls, shouting "Christ Killers."

For 2000 years, the cross has not been a symbol of love for Jews, but a symbol of fear, oppression, torture, and death.

Today, Christians are working very hard to change this association. It's not going to happen overnight.

Yet the atheists Stalin and Mao both tried to stomp out religion including murdering millions of their own citizens. It appears they weren't antisemitic; they hated all religions equally. Progress!

 

[paarsurrey]

Yet the atheists Stalin and Mao both tried to stomp out religion including murdering millions of their own citizens. It appears they weren't antisemitic; they hated all religions equally. Progress!

Early followers of Jesus used fish as a sign for their religion. Cross was imported by the Church from the Pagans. Right, please?:
"The ichthys or ichthus (/ˈɪkθəs/[1]), from the Greek ikhthýs (ἰχθύς 1st cent. AD Koine Greek [ikʰˈtʰys], "fish") is a symbol consisting of two intersecting arcs, the ends of the right side extending beyond the meeting point so as to resemble the profile of a fish. The symbol was adopted by early Christians as a secret symbol. It is now known colloquially as the "sign of the fish" or the "Jesus fish".[2]
Ichthys - Wikipedia

Regards

 

[Trailblazer]

Early followers of Jesus used fish as a sign for their religion. Cross was a imported by the Church from the Pagans. Right, please?:
"The ichthys or ichthus (/ˈɪkθəs/[1]), from the Greek ikhthýs (ἰχθύς 1st cent. AD Koine Greek [ikʰˈtʰys], "fish") is a symbol consisting of two intersecting arcs, the ends of the right side extending beyond the meeting point so as to resemble the profile of a fish. The symbol was adopted by early Christians as a secret symbol. It is now known colloquially as the "sign of the fish" or the "Jesus fish".[2]
Ichthys - Wikipedia

Regards

The symbol is befitting Jesus because Baha'u'llah wrote.....

“We behold you, O children of the Kingdom, in darkness. This, verily, beseemeth you not. Are ye, in the face of the Light, fearful because of your deeds? Direct yourselves towards Him… Verily, He (Jesus) said: ‘Come ye after Me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.’ In this day, however, We say: ‘Come ye after Me, that We may make you to become quickeners of mankind.’” Proclamation of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 91

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Yet the atheists Stalin and Mao both tried to stomp out religion including murdering millions of their own citizens. It appears they weren't antisemitic; they hated all religions equally. Progress!

This is a different topic. Please stay on subject.

 

[Jos]

Imagine what the Aztec and Incas thought when
they saw the white man's God was someone strung up on a cross.

Weren't those two groups of people extinct long before Christianity was was around? I don't understand the meaning of the sentence, care to elaborate?

 

[Thief]

and He said......take up your cross and follow Me

anyone doing so?

 

[Trailblazer]

and He said......take up your cross and follow Me

anyone doing so?

Not many.

 

[PruePhillip]

Weren't those two groups of people extinct long before Christianity was was around? I don't understand the meaning of the sentence, care to elaborate?

Pizzaro conquered the Incas and Cortez conquered the Aztecs.
It astonished these people to see the god the Spanish carried with
them, as if on a totem pole - the cross of Christ.
The Jews of the OT would have struggled with those passages
which describe their Messiah as having his "visage marred"
meaning his appearance is distorted, tortured, deathly.
How did that square in their belief in the conquering King?

Iaiah 52:13-15
"Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his
form more than the sons of men: So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut
their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they
had not heard shall they consider.".

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I wear a ring of my own handiwork
stainless item with a large cross on it

for me it is a constant reminder....
this world will crucify anyone
even if you CAN walk on water

Roman execution, a tortured corpse and human sacrifice.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

For 2000 years, the cross has not been a symbol of love for Jews, but a symbol of fear, oppression, torture, and death.

Or for much of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Oceania, the Pacific Islands, Africa, etc. It represents genocide. They will never be able to apologize enough for what they've done. It is irrevocable.

 

[PruePhillip]

Or for much of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Oceania, the Pacific Islands, Africa, etc. It represents genocide. They will never be able to apologize enough for what they've done. It is irrevocable.

Please don't connect one with the other.
Some thoughts -
1 - mistreatment of other peoples in the name of God leads to two serious charges -
one being your treatment of others and secondly, your doing so in the name of God.
2 - people blamed conflict on religion, so in the 20th Century religion played a very
small part in the geopolitics. The death rate soared enormously through secular wars.
3 - Spain, in particular, did not colonize Sth America because of religion but because
of land, gold, slaves, trade and misc resourses.
4 - if native Americans had developed technology ahead of Europe then they would
have invaded Europe and did to white people what they frequently did to each other.

 

[Thief]

human sacrifice.

true it is.....Christians preach the sacrifice of the Carpenter

and He did say.....Take up your cross and follow Me

but I for one cannot reconcile the death of one Man as a sacrifice for all men

the scapegoat routine was handed down by Moses
and I never really bought into it

lay my faults unto another life?
not buying that

and when that other life dies my faults die with it?
not buying that either

I used to wear a really nice cross about my neck
the chain finally failed after several decades

nowadays I wear a stainless steel ring engraved by my own machine work

and for me it is a reminder.....
this world will crucify anyone.....even if you CAN walk on water

that would not be sacrifice
my cross serves as fair warning

 

[David J]

Most annoying bumper sticker ever

 

[Road Warrior]

Most annoying bumper sticker ever

So what do you do? Shoot at them? Try to run them off the road? Vote to suppress all expression of religion? What have you done and what do you desire to be done?

 

[Thief]

So what do you do? Shoot at them? Try to run them off the road? Vote to suppress all expression of religion? What have you done and what do you desire to be done?

are you suggesting...crucifixion?

sort of?....kind of?

 

[Road Warrior]

are you suggesting...crucifixion?

sort of?....kind of?

It's a question, not a suggestion. I was curious how people like him were planning to stomp out religion.