As the world turns…

In some ways, however, it is becoming more difficult to close our eyes to reality. We are beginning to see more clearly now that children who rape and murder seem to be getting younger and younger, that no school or church seems to be safe from gunfire, that the Internet has greatly increased our capacity to share lethal information. Too many clergy have been arrested for child molestation, too many teachers have been caught sexually abusing students, too many supposedly upstanding citizens have downloaded too much child pornography. There is something sickening in human nature, and it corresponds precisely to the sickening aspects of crucifixion. The hideousness of crucifixion summons us to put away sentimentality and face up to the ugliness that lies just under the surface. The scandal, the outrage of the cross, is commensurate with the offense and the ubiquity of sin. Views of atonement wrought by Christ that do not acknowledge the gravity of Sin are untruthful in two respects: they are untruthful about the human condition, and they are untruthful about the witness of Holy Scripture, Old and New Testament alike. Sin is the colossal X-factor in human life. It is not something we do so much as it is something done to us by our mortal foe, the alien Power that has lured us into becoming its agents. There is no room for sentiment here; the stakes are too high. The cross rears up over all human life because it is the scene of God’s climactic battle against the power of a malignant and implacable Enemy.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 197