Can We Have a Christ Without a Cross?

When deconstructing empties Jesus of the atonement

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash

(A five-minute read.)

I worry that in our good and appropriate attempts to deconstruct and decolonize our faith, we’re at risk of de-crossing our faith.

What I mean is that I hear an increasing amount of rhetoric, in our attempts to appeal to those deconstructing their faith, that admires Jesus for his life and teachings, but basically empties him of his atoning sacrifice.

In such constructions, Jesus is the great “includer,” inviting everyone to the table. Or he’s the great “liberator,” freeing people from the bonds of economic, social, or racial oppression. Or he’s the great “healer” or “comforter” or “encourager” or “teacher.”

But he’s less and less a “savior” these days.

Don’t get me wrong: I think he’s all of the above things. And I think Christianity, for too long, has perhaps placed an inordinate amount of emphasis on his death—to the neglect of his life and teachings.

I’m also very attracted to the type of Jesus that likes to emphasize inclusion—the type of Jesus that accepts us when others condemn us; that embraces us when others reject us; who always has a place at the table for anyone and everyone.

I speak and write of this Jesus often. I’m a big fan.

I also have concerns about the version of Christ’s atoning sacrifice that’s often peddled by many Christians—which essentially turns God into a tyrant who requires blood-appeasement. Such a picture scandalizes the mind and heart, and rightfully repulses people whose moral sensibilities have been shaped by modern concerns.

I get why people would thus downplay the cross if this is the only explanation of it.

But we’re not proclaiming and promoting the way of Jesus if we’re not including the cross of Jesus. We’re not fully preaching the wonderful love of Christ if we’re omitting the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

It seems to me that part of the reason for the diminishing role of the cross in a deconstructed Christianity is because of our loss for a sense of the transcendent. As I’ve written about before, we live in an age when this-worldly, immanent concerns are largely the only issues that occupy our imagination.

How to live a good, ethical, fulfilling, and justice-seeking life now often captivates the bulk of our attention.

And when it comes to spirituality specifically, our main focus centers on figuring out how to feel good about ourselves, how to love and get along with each other, and how to live out the ethic of Jesus.

Christianity thus essentially becomes conflated with humanism, trying to better this world without much thought of the next.

Again, I get this. I think it’s good as far as it goes. As someone has said, we’re often so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly good.

But in an immanent-only framework, the cross has no meaning or purpose. It doesn’t make sense. God doesn’t need a cross to love us. He can simply invite us to his table in order for us to feel loved, accepted, and valued. He can simply draw the outsider in as a way to communicate the dignity of all—regardless of race, gender, or sexuality (or whatever other categories we want to throw in).

The cross thus becomes redundant at best—and perhaps completely unnecessary altogether.

If this is our only emphasis, however, not only do we have to ignore large segments of Scripture (which is a move many are willing to make, of course), we also end up trying to anesthetize ourselves against the “ghosts of transcendence,” in the words of philosopher James K. A. Smith, that continue to haunt us.

But, try as we might, I get the sense that we’ll never escape the persistent question, which surfaces in our consciences with penetrating regularity, “How can I be right with God?”

Or, to borrow the question from the jailer in Philippi to Paul and Silas after they refused to bolt when an earthquake leveled their prison cell, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

In other words, deep within our bosom we sense there’s a vast chasm between us and the eternal. We sense something has gone awry and some sort of reconciliation needs to take place in order to get us dancing to the rhythm of transcendence once again.

Humanity has fallen and is in need of redemption. The world rebelled against God—the Bible uses the term “sin” here—and needs to be brought back into harmony with him.

Indeed, it’s not simply that we need to feel better about ourselves—though this is certainly true. Neither is it that we need to figure out ways to live more loving and serving lives—though that’s also absolutely true.

We’re alienated from God, unable to be in his presence, and our self-centeredness makes us unfit for the fellowship of the unfallen universe.

And thus the need for the cross—God’s answer to the transcendent dilemma humanity finds itself in.

Or, as the author of Hebrews says, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22).

Such a concept, as I already mentioned, troubles—and perhaps confuses—our enlightened scruples.

I get it. I don’t fully understand exactly how it works, but I take by faith it’s true, and simply bow to this incredible thought—which Christians have applied to Jesus for millennia:

But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth (Isaiah 53:4-6)

According to a Jewish teacher writing hundreds of years later—who went by the name “Paul”—it’s this very message, “the message of the cross,” as he called it, that is “the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

So, yes, let’s rethink and reimagine and deconstruct and decolonize our faith. But let’s not de-cross it in the process—at least if we want to maintain anything that approximates the full message and way of Jesus.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.