Speaking wisely of the cross.
The cross means no one else has to die for the
world to be made right again.
Not one more person has to die to balance a
scale, to ensure that we have enough of
whatever it is, to satisfy vengeance, to make
my life more convenient, to improve the quality
of another person's existence, or please add
any of our deadly rationales. They all belong in
Gehenna.
We will die and some will be killed, but
Christians, as people who believe the death of
Christ is the only death that can make the
world right again-trust that when God dies for
the world he loves as a human that death itself
dies-we ought to be be the people who say to
the spirit of Cain in all the ways that spirit
arises in us, "No more!"
Image: Peter Howson, Harrowing of Hell
exhibition, detail, 1999.