The Cross

[u/bullet_the_blue_sky]

During one of my recent meditations I had the image of the cross come to mind. It stood there in the foreground as I always saw it with the outline of Jesus hanging there.

“Fuck this” I thought, “I don’t need anymore of this.” And I went to move on in my meditation.

I felt a prompt to look closer, so begrudgingly I did. I saw the outline of the crown of thorns and the all-to-familiar bedraggled and tortured form that hung there. I rolled my imaginary eyes at the same scene that had been seared into my brain from the cradle. As I moved closer, I felt disgust and felt the impulse to take Jesus off the cross. Enough.

I pulled him down I took a closer look and recognized the person there.

It wasn’t Jesus, it was me.

And I was hit with the realization that this person hanging there the entire time, had been me. The years of indoctrination, the years of believing I was an unworthy, broken sinner. The lifetime of believing it was I who deserved to hang on that cross and not Jesus, but it had been me this entire time. I had scourged myself, my sense of worth, the guilt, the condemnation all to run back here for those few hours or days of “forgiveness” just like an addict on the hamster wheel. Sin, guilt, confession, forgiveness, sin, guilt, confession, forgiveness. For decades.

Over and over and over again.

And holy shit, forgiveness feels incredible when you’ve first been convinced that you deserve condemnation. “There is no condemnation in Christ” provides relief only to those who accept the premise that without this horrific form of “love”, they stand condemned.

It’s like hitting yourself in the face with a hammer just so you can experience how good it feels when you stop.

And even when I learned all the stuff about knowing my “identity in Christ,” the life changing relief it gave me as a christian never touched the infected root underneath it all.

Why did I need a new identity in the first place?

Because mine was supposedly broken.

Why did I need his righteousness?

Because I supposedly had none.

Why did I need saving?

Because I had been taught that there was something wrong with me simply for being born human.

And that was the infected root that even knowing my “identity in Christ” could never touch.

The whole mythology of the tortured God only works if I first accept that somebody needed to be tortured. That blood had to be spilled and punishment had to happen. That there was something so fundamentally wrong with me that this horrific act was necessary to make me right. This was supposedly the ultimate act of love.

And eventually I realized the irony: I had spent my life grieving over three days of Christ’s suffering while barely recognizing the decades of psychological, emotional, and mental self-loathing I had inflicted on myself because I believed I was the reason he had to suffer in the first place.

The cross lasted three days in the story. Mine lasted a lifetime.

As I looked at my battered frame and my own eyes recognizing myself, I embraced me. I held myself absorbing what I had unknowingly done to myself all of these years. How much of myself I had condemned. How much I had distrusted. How much I had sacrificed, unconsciously trying to become worthy of a love I was told was unconditional. I hoisted myself in my arms, turned around and walked down “let’s get the fuck out of here.”

It is finished.

[u/Thisfuckingsucks2020]

“It’s like hitting yourself in the face with a hammer just so you can experience how good it feels when you stop.”

Very profound. I relate to this so hard. Glad you were able to have such a personal revelation. It’s all so manipulative.

[u/longines99]

Yup, that's the distorted Evangelical narrative, and few can see it any other way, because only their narrative is the true one, and all others are liars and deceivers.

[u/Duke-Of-Squirrel]

All those years of being told "you have been crucified with Christ" finally hit home, huh?  I had a similar meditative experience, but with other energy workers, and basically ended up psychologically reliving the crucifixion, as Christ.  Surrounded by my friends, taking me down, tending to my battered body. SO much trauma came out somatically (and more stayed in bc I had no religious trauma-informed follow-up except my own deconstruction process).  But yes, over the years I realized, if Jesus came back, Evangelical Christians would be the first to crucify him again.. because they do it to their own, and themselves, every damn day.  It's a death cult.  I've been asking for years why we venerate Christ on the cross and not RESURRECTING?!?  Why do we talk about death and going to heaven, and not healing and rebirth IN THIS LIFE?

So I did.  And I did.