People don't want to wait minutes or hours for response to emails. This is a tragedy.
Worse was when people no longer wanted to wait days or weeks for snail mail.
Don't get me started on how things deteriorated when people lost patience with the foot messenger.
Hell, even with unlimited long distance available, you'll find that people have even lost patience with the time it takes for a breath to form a word.
I gotta go yell at my microwave. It's taking FOR-EVER!
My goodness, defense of this symbol-not-idol is overwhelming.
*tiptoes softly away from the cross-not-idol*
NC, the difference of a symbol to a logo.
I was not arguing the difference between a symbol and a logo. A logo is a symbol, by very defintion. My discussion was differentiating the difference between a logo and and idol. Idols are also symols also. It's not the symbol but the significance behind it.
For those that argue it simply helps a Christian focus, I guess that trashes the walk by faith not sight principal. The law on your heart. The thought of Jesus elevating any symbol in his life the way the cross has been elevated goes against all I read about Jesus and even the Ancient Jews. Yes, there was a copper snake in the desert---but what happened to that symbol? Well, understanding the risk of it becoming an idol, as is human nature, it was taken away. Considering the proven risk of Christians elevating the cross to an idol, why don't leaders in Christianity do the same?
And again, none of this addresses exactly what is being symbolized. Was it not Jesus's body, offered as a sacrifice that is significant, rather than the tool used to bring about his death? Any tool would have done---it's exchangeable. But what does not change, within Chrisitian belief, is the body that was offered up. That signifies life to them. Bread also signifies life, and Jesus said that bread meant his body. Or if you'd rather go with blood, then wine. Why are these not the things symbolized? The cross is death, not resurrection. But bread? The body? The body that died and was resurrected? It seems to make more sense to focus on something like this---something that can be given---something that can sustain life, rather than focus on death.
But as I said, it's been a cult of suffering and torture for a long time. Perhaps less torture today, but suffering is still honored. Bread doesn't evoke the same kind of emotional response as death. It doesn't dismiss horrendous things done in the name of Christianity throughout the years, and even presently. As Chrisitianity becomes more influenced by secularism, it becomes less brutal. As science enlightens, the old ways are being left behind. Externally. Internally, I think it is very different. Look at the sensation that The Passion of Christ turned out to be. All the gory details, and churches bought up blocks of seats.
It's sanctioned idolatry. Christianity enables people to do twists and turns in their brains to make it not so, but it is so. From flagellatioin, to Inquisition, to kneeling on rice, to Mother Teresa, to insisting a person must suffer and die slowly, as anything to help them let go would be immoral----it's all about the suffering and death. That's why bread won't do. That's why a torture device is the appropriate symbol/logo/idol.
You open a drawer and find the picture of a loved one passed away that you haven't seen in a long time. You are overcome with emotion. Are you crying over a picture? What is the object of your emotion?
Are you denying that some of that is not actual devotion to the symbol? Not in all cases, of course. However if my loved one were killed by a gun or a knife, I don't think I would want to intensify my grief by having those pictures laying about. It seems natural to me to feel a healthy grief over things that are momentos of passed loved-ones. A moment of reflection. It seems unnatural to me to reach to magnify the grief and pick the scab by displaying the cause of death. I don't have pictures of cancerous tumors in my home to remind me of my mother. That would be unbalanced at best.
But I don't think that individuals are unbalanced that cling to the cross, but the culture that molded them to give significance to a symbol that really was a torture device. Has such had an impact on people? I think so. History kind of proves that torture within Christian cultures was seen as righteous in some way. Sometimes even as a cleansing of sins. My friend's mother had to kneel on rice and say the rosary when she was bad. That's torture. Is it ancient history? It was only a generation ago, and I have learned since then, it was not an aberration, but I've heard quite a few stories of the last generation kneeling on rice as children. One of my highschool teachers went to a Catholic school. He said every morning, every single morning, the students would have to hold their hands out, palm up. The nun would whack them all on the palms with a ruler and proclaim, "That is for the bad thing you did, and if you haven't done anything bad, that is for the bad thing you will do."
Times are changing. As things become more secular, there is push back. It's not okay to force every child to greet the day with stings to their hands. Yet I still find it noteworthy that being good and experiencing pain went hand-in-hand for so long. It still goes on today. Mother Teresa and her cult of suffering as though it was holy. I think the cross is simply a symbol of this. Implement of torture=holiness and forgiveness of sins. It goes much deeper than the cross, but that is the visual we are given. Humans are inherently defective, in need of repair, and the only way to achieve that was torture and a drawn out death.
In one of our informal fellowship get togethers, with JW brothers and sisters, it was stated from a second generation JW that she used Watchtower magazines under the doors in hotel rooms and places they visited to keep away evil.
Yes, I believe that. I don't think it is usual, but it is a human tendency to be superstitious. I found they were also very good at keeping vampires and Catholics away.
This sounds very much like what a JW would say
Indeed. And since I was speaking from the POV of a JW, it is also appropriate. But more importantly, it is true. JW's do not view the stake with the same significance that some Christians view the cross. I was responding to comparisons being made, but they were false equivalencies.
CA, that's a logo. The cross is not a logo. And the actual symbol doesn't matter, but the significance given it. If Christians in the majority did believe it was a stake, I suspect we'd see images of stakes everywhere. Do people become attached to logos in the way they do in the cross? I don't think so. I look at the tower and understand it is a WT publication, but beyond that, it has no real emotional meaning for me. I'm not attached, and I was not attached when I was a JW. I didn't look to it to represent or remind me of anything. I didn't look at it as something that defined me.
What is an idol? Is it something we have to worship? Or is it merely a representation of what we worship, that attains such emotional significance that it is elevated above a reasonable proportion? I do see it as an idol. People cry at the site of some crosses. People grasp them for comfort and courage, perhaps holding them while they pray. I won't insist you are an idolator if you say you are not, but I can only comment on how such behavior and reverence is perceived. It looks a lot like idolotry.
But Jesus was not just a prophet that preached and showed love. Otherwise He would have been no different from others that did the same (i.e Ghandi or Buddha). Jesus significance was that He was God who came to sacrifice His body for man. His death is the entire significance of Christianity. His death for our sins. Paul spoke of "the message of the cross". (1Cor 1:18) It is this message that is of the greatest importance to Christians. Like was already brought out, I think, Paul decided not to know ANYTHING but Jesus and Him crucified.
And bread also represents Jesus's body---which he sacrificed. Bread would be a good idol. Why not idolize the body, which symbolizes the true sacrifice rather than the implementation of torture----afterall----beheading him would have worked just as well. But isn't it the body that was sacrificed the important part, as symbolized by the bread, and not the instrument used? Then there is the blood/wine. I'm all for idolizing wine.
I find that problematic. The cross IS held up as an idol. As far as JW's and the 'stake' issue---they don't actually hold that stake up as anything. It's not like a cross. It has not become some wierd symbol or idol. And although it can be argued that it is a phallic symbol, I think in this context that argument falls flat. Sometimes a stake is just a stake. It's what you make of it. Unless you think that anything of a certain shape is automatically a phallic symbol. In which case, cucumbers, bananas and corn on the cob would be a god creating phallic symbols, and using pens and pencils would become a bit dodgy.
So JW's don't add significance to the stake beyond that it was a stake.
There is significance behind the cross. Deep significance. And to reason that it is not an idol is simply cognitive dissonance.
If someone put a bullet in Hitler's head before he killed millions of people, I would not frame the gun or wear images of it around my neck. I would not elevate the gun used to holy proportions. There is a hero behind that gun, and I may honor him or her. There are principals behind that gun, and I may hold those principals. But I'm not going to build buildings and put statues of that gun out front. The JW analogy is not horrific. Clothing oneself in an implement of torture is.
So much could be used to symbolize Jesus and the principals he taught. A loaf of bread. That could certainly represent life, the word, salvation. The ancient Aztecs practiced human sacrifice too. They did this for reasons that were valid to them. Yet most Christians would be repulsed if archeologists were to find that they wore knives used for sacrifce as decorations about their necks. Or even more shocking would be images of bleeding hearts recently evicted from living chests.
But make images of the bleeding heart of Jesus or Mary, and superimpose an image of an implement of torture, and it's a holy image.
The mind is a twisty-turny place.
