Jesus’ death on the Cross was not a limited act only for his family, the 12, the other followers and some of the rest of the world that was salvageable. Imagine Jesus saying from the Cross, “Father, forgive my disciples, two of those Roman soldiers who hate crucifixions, and my family although they did not support me at times. However, I have no love for the Jewish religious establishment and the hated Romans; we need to eliminate them. Also, eliminate the weak, for they don’t have anything to add.”
Instead, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them.”
The recent focus on “ordered love” cited by Vice President JD Vance, has its origin with Augustine and later was cited and expanded upon by Thomas Aquinas. Augustine, of course, says love for God is first: nothing is to be loved in the place of God. So one is to begin with God and then order love.
But if we begin with God, where does that beginning take us next? It takes us to Jesus on the Cross, the ultimate act of God’s love that has an ultimate inclusiveness about it: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
“If we begin with God, where does that beginning take us next?”
In Christ, God determines the nature or quality of love he calls us to have. Paul, for whom the Cross was a central reality, found a love far beyond his expectation. For example, he reserves the noun agape, or “love,” for God’s love. Paul used the verb agapao in reference to humans, but not the noun, for we are to learn the love from God and express it outward as Jesus did from the Cross. We cannot invent agape, God’s love; it is received from him.
To neglect Jesus on the Cross as a foundation for shaping theology and ethics is not Christianity. Cross love is for “them,” any “them” outward from ourselves.
Something is basically wrong with “America First.” There is a difference in trying to spread the good around versus hoarding the good to oneself, a difference in seeing my neighbor here and not over there.
Dominion
Through his book Dominion, English historian Tom Holland created a lot of discussion about Christianity and Western culture. His contention, widely accepted, is that Christianity has so shaped Western culture that, whether we are believers or unbelievers, we swim in Christian waters.
We are shaped neither by the classical Greek and Roman cultures nor by the Enlightenment. Rather, according to Holland, the shape comes from the figure on the Cross, Jesus, where the tortured ultimately conquers the torturer. He so uniquely shaped things that Holland claims even where there was not a general acceptance of Christianity in Western contexts, Jesus still was the moral exemplar.
Keep in mind that Holland, when writing this book, did so as an agnostic. Yet he establishes the shaping influence of the Cross.
The idea of the least being as important as the most important person in ancient classical cultures was utterly unthinkable. The powerful were the ones blessed by the gods. They could dispose of or use the weak and other underlings for their pleasure. Jesus dying on the Cross seemed to them and their followers so useless, so utterly different and powerless — “foolishness” and a “stumbling block.”
Yet beginning at the Cross, the truth of God worked its way through to Western life.
The most prominent exception of that shaping in the modern West was fascism, according to Holland. Hitler fashioned himself and Germany after classical Rome. Hitler wove a cross-less, cultural Christianity to his purpose. So, the right thing to do was to eradicate an entire people and any who stood in the way. After all, the Aryan race, like the ancient Romans, was superior. “Unto the least of these” was ridiculous. Power over was the place to be. Use a whole people for one’s benefit. Get rid of those standing in the way.
Any person or group given significant powers and demonizing another people heads down the same path. Gain power by making enemies, marking them as unredeemable in order to galvanize a following. It’s a twisted mechanism that keeps and increases that power for oneself.
So at the end of a wrong kind of ordered love are the enemies. The “loved” are to act against or ignore the “unloved.”
Cross-love
Standing in such paths is the tortured one, the righteous one on the Cross who is the answer to this evil. Jesus’ act on the Cross is for everyone, even his enemies. What Jesus does for all, we are to do for others. The weak and destitute are to receive the help of the strong.
“Jesus’ act on the Cross is for everyone, even his enemies.”
Cross-love is not a sentimental feeling but a decided, outgoing action.
The Cross-action of Jesus also is an action against. It is a tough action-oriented love. It is against that which makes anyone less than a human, less than being in the image of God. Therefore, it is against murder, human trafficking, human manipulation, injustice, lies or any form of dehumanizing.
To make people at the border less than human rather than being treated in the light of the Cross is a great sin. Jesus is against rulers who oppress and use people for their particular cause.
The Cross-ethical influence is threatened in the West. A cultural “Christianity” to be actualized by the state seeks the spotlight.
We continue to move toward power over as preferred to power given, favoring the strong while sending the weak to the bench, taking them out of the game. The billionaires gathered for the inauguration to make sure their power and wealth stays and grows to play the game on their terms. Dominating leaders admired or worshipped. Clothe them with a little religion, place them on top of the mountain, and we don’t have to deal with Golgotha and the One on that mountain.
“Cultural Christianity attempts to shut down the real stuff.”
In contrast, Jesus places the poorest person at the inauguration center whether the powers want that person there or not. What Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde said in closing her sermon at the post-inaugural prayer service at Washington National Cathedral was Cross-oriented. The response of the president and evangelical leaders to her was bereft of Jesus, proclaiming that cultural “Christianity” that sets itself against the Cross.
Cultural Christianity attempts to shut down the real stuff.
How to survive
Such responses have given rise to this question: Can the West survive without Jesus’ followers centering ethics in Jesus on the Cross where the ethic finds its authenticity and strength? Can America survive?
The answer is no. A cultural Christianity cannot equate its ethics to the self-giving service of Jesus. It has no foundation; it flows through culture like air without oxygen access. The drift in a significant part of evangelical culture seems to be that everything is OK as long as those in political and economic power mention God, Jesus or something that sounds Christian. After all, to “turn the other cheek” is too weak; it doesn’t work anymore, or so Donald Trump Jr. indicated.
The truth is “turn the other cheek” as Jesus meant it is the only reality that really works. Instead of meeting hate with hate, insult with insult, hurt with hurt, we are to meet the other with a tough love.
Sources of power
Christian nationalism is an effort to make a cultural Christianity stick. In all his ministry and teaching, Jesus never advocated seeking and gaining the powers of the state. Rather, his kingdom is over and around the powers and even through them, as he demonstrated with Pilate and the Roman power at his trial.
“Christian nationalism is an effort to make a cultural Christianity stick.”
To Pilate Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
“World” meant the physical, cultural, institutional governance like that of the Roman rule. His rule is in the world, not of the world. Jesus’ kingdom operates differently. Pilate did not understand; hence he could not get to the truth.
In his final message to the nation, George Washington moved us in the right direction. He was for separation of church and state but emphasized the need for national morality and moral principles operative within the state, necessary he believed for democracy to survive: “And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
For Christians, the abiding religious principle is Jesus, centering in the Cross. The truth of the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ other teachings and the dynamic revelation of Jesus’ life receive their final fulness in the Cross and resurrection events.
The resurrection affirms the life-giving Christ is Lord of all, but we come to him by way of his Cross. Beginning at the Cross is a tough call. If Christians don’t begin there, however, the Christian theological and ethical influence will continue to diminish.
Jesus gave the responsibility for communicating this religious reality to his church. The church is his will, his idea, his plan, that this be so. The church acts both inside and outside the state with the Cross message, but it is not to attempt to become the state as surely as the state never can be the church.
It is right that the Cross is the most recognized symbol of Christianity. It is right for us to commit to live toward and by the Cross. The very familiar question we may ask ourselves is, “What would Jesus do?”
That’s a good question, but it can be asked in such a way that stops short of the Cross. Perhaps we should add to that question by asking, “What would Jesus from the Cross have us do?”
Joe Blair served as chair of Christianity/religion departments at two Baptist universities. He was a professor for 26 years, teaching courses primarily in the New Testament disciplines. He has written for the BAPTISTWAY Press and for Baptist papers. His Introducing the New Testament is a basic, introductory level text that both students and laity have found helpful.
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