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Why do they worship crosses
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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Atheism
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You seemed to have wholly misinterpreted the comment you're replying to in your condescending rambling. Kinda crazy that you even mentioned RFID payments somehow in your tangent. You lost the plot big time
No one said "the bible says the cross is a symbol for the religion of Christianity". Not a single verse says that, and no one claimed so. but the cross in the text is important and is symbolic of redemption/love/sacrifice. You don't need the text to say that, it's just a simple literary analysis. That's how symbols work.
Like what are you even saying with your last paragraph there? If you read the Bible, the importance and significance of the event where Jesus died on a cross is kind of hard to miss. It's wild to me that you can make a comment like yours and then pretend you're so wise and intelligent and above other people while you're rambling nonsense about RFID payments. Get a grip, dude.
Not really. There's one line in the Synoptics about "unless you carry the cross as I do" and a few mentions of the cross in the Epistles, but it didn't have nearly the significance it later takes on in the religion.
The gospels certainly cover the crucifixion with the passion narrative, but at the time it was more about dealing with the embarrassment of the cross than its glorification - the Messiah was supposed to be a war leader who led the Jews in a final battle of liberation and instead their guy was crucified.
So the narrative is mostly around trying to address how really this embarrassing event was fulfilling prophecy and addressing why he didn't just magic himself off of it (eventually developing the narrative to the point that in John he effectively does just that spiritually, leading to later beliefs like docetism - that he was a phantom without corporeal form and didn't suffer at all on the cross, popular around the time the focus on the cross was starting).
Again, you can see that in the earliest of the Epistles the cross is referred to as "the offense of the cross" (Gal 5:11), and at this early point the significance is clearly still developing as Paul sees the cross as symbolically crucifying the world to him in Gal 6:14 (Paul's undisputed letters have 2-5x the personal reference of the non-Pauline Epistles, much like the writing of vulnerable narcissists).
The Christology around the significance of the cross simply isn't where you think it is when the NT is being composed to support your view of it as symbolically hard to miss. In the text itself, it's actually quite easy to miss, which was why it took two centuries to become a thing.
What a well formulated response. You're right about everything you've said in regards to what the text literally says, but you've still missed the point.
I was speaking hyperbole, the bible is massive and definitely lends itself to missing the significance of certain events, especially if you blitz through it. But Jesus dying is still a significant event of the book, without it the whole book itself loses its narrative cohesion and collapses on itself. And handwaving mentions of the cross/Jesus dying on the cross away as "a few mentions of it in the epistles" (which is 21/27 books in the NT btw) is exactly what you're doing, downplaying the significance of the event. The epistles arent random side stories in the bible, they're one of the most applicable and relevant portions of the whole text
Jesus coming and dying is alluded to before it happens, prophesied, then recounted and written about multiple times throughout the whole text. It is indeed a significant event. You don't need the text to focus literally on the cross itself for it to be a symbol of the event that occurred. Which is what I've already said prior. "the cross as a symbol is directly supported in the text" is exactly what I already said is not being discussed. You seem to be arguing points that no one is arguing.
Look, you read the Bible, you study the text, and you realize Jesus death which happened on a cross is a big deal, the cross then is merely a symbol of that event. It's that simple. The cross is not a symbol of itself, which is what your analysis seems to imply. The cross being a symbol is not some conspiracy about gaslighting people on what the bible says about the cross. It's just an easy way to represent what is one of the most significant events of the bible in addition to the direct references to it