Photo Courtesy Of Columbus Dispatch
Someone asked me privately why “I hate this thing” referring to the Starkville Cross of Christ as I mentioned in a previous post.
The ultimate point of that post was not the cross but how those of us in Christ can, by His grace, push past even very strongly held positions to fight toward each other in love.
Notwithstanding, I think it would be helpful to the cause of “fighting toward each other in love” to understand why I disdain this monument.
Despite a lot of responses to the post focusing on it, for me, it is not about the money or what it could have been better spent toward. That’s tertiary, at best.
But as I have written previously, I find the giant cross problematic, “not because of what it is but because of what it was erected in the absence of”.
The absence I’m referring to is love, basically.
Everything else is derivative.
It’s unfortunate that this cross was erected during one of the most divisive times in history, meanwhile:
there is no concerted effort by the Christian community here to address the schisms in the church. Sunday remains the most segregated day of the week.
there is no concerted effort by the church to address schisms in our community. We remain very divided.
and, there are a host of community challenges we, as the church, are well equipped and well resourced to address, yet no concerted effort.
We seem happy with the level of suffering around us, but erect a giant cross to symbolize Christ’s love.
Sigh.
Love is the primary thing.
And, that is what I find absent.
Building shelters, providing food banks, or erecting giant crosses will all be ultimately unprofitable without love.
As the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, I can do all sorts of amazing and even extreme things like selling everything I have to feed the poor or even giving my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
Christ’s love is supernatural because it’s God’s love.
That love will transform our community and us.
That love will engender the response appropriate to meet the specific need of each individual and branches properly to connect them all (to God).
It’s only something that those of us who are called by Christ can do.
Tactics ain’t gonna get it.
At the very most basic application, I can tell you that no one I love is going without anything if I can help it.
The problem is we don’t love each other.
Is there truly a God?
I believe there is.
Prove it.
Love miracuously.