That's a good question

Because according to the Christian faith, the death on the cross is the moment of victory. The divide-by-zero that absolves sin.

So, I’m no theologian, but I did grow up studying this stuff quite a bit. Here’s a probably-flawed explanation of my understanding of the teaching.

God created the world, and the creation fell short of his image for it. That’s what “sin” is, a falling-short-of-perfection. God’s perfect nature requires perfection for communion with his creation, so in an attempt to bring humanity back into communion with him, Jesus (who is both God and human) comes to live among the creation, lives a perfect life, and is killed. The teaching is that death is a result of imperfection, so the death of someone with human nature who was perfect wipes out the “cost” of sin.

So humans are again able to be connected with their Creator, despite the fact that none of them are perfect.

Christians are encouraged to follow the laws of scripture not because failure to do so will damn them, but because said laws can be good for them. The Bible outright says humans cannot get to heaven through their actions. So when Christians get all high and mighty about sin, they’re missing the point entirely. (Or, perhaps, they’re following what they’ve been taught by people who use religion to control people.)

It frustrates me to see Christians championing anti-LGBT causes and whatnot. Like, I don’t care if you think it’s sinful, the entire point of the religion is that everyone is sinful. The Bible is clear on this. Jesus came for sinners. After all, if people were perfect they wouldn’t need a savior in this system.

Someone can probably do a better, more theologically consistent job explaining this, but that’s my understanding.

The thing that really pisses me off is seeing Christians who hate Jews with the reasoning that the Jews were the ones who shouted for Jesus to be crucified when Pilot didn't know what to do about it.
If they didn't, your story would be broken as fuck and your sins would never be absolved. You wanted Jesus to be killed or the whole point of his existence is meaningless!
- All cool but the dude's name was Pontius Pilate (Poncio Pilato)
Because according to the Christian faith, the death on the cross is the moment of victory. The divide-by-zero that absolves sin.
clever romans cut that gordian knot: "he's the son of god? and god? ok yeah sure buddy, Romulus, grab the nails."

Jesus was born in September and christmas trees are giant dicks. Yes you read that right. They're penises. Festively festooned penises. Blame the catholics. They steamrolled every pagan tradition they could find into the catholic canon in order to convert the peasants to their particular cult.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Okay so what makes pine trees dicks? I knew about Jesus being in the wrong month and about taking over the pegan winter festival, but nothing about dicks.

As a bored kid in church, this is a question I pondered many times. Why would we choose to honor the method of torture that caused his death?

it's to honor the sacrifice he made to abscond humanity of their sins.
- Yeah, that doesn't make sense either. How does dying by torture "absolve" (the word you were reaching for) humankind from their "sins," and what sins are they talking about anyway? Sins are only religious rules, and if religion is a just a human construct, then they aren't valid anyway.
  I've never seen a religious message of any kind that made logical sense.
- If God is all powerful, couldn't he just do that without all the bloody, painful, torture part???
  That's what I wondered about.
- he could have just, you know, forgiven them. Like he preached. If I kill myself over a grudge I hold towards you, that just makes me an idiot. And, If also I go around preaching forgiveness to everyone else, a hypocrite
I always think of Jesus in the electric chair and followers wearing little "electric chairs" on a necklace

Y'ever think about how if Jesus died by a guillotine there'd be guillotines everywhere

You think if he was shot the gun manufacturer would use that in their advertising?

I like crucifixes, i study their design and craftsmanship while the Karen wearing it is berating me at work and threatening to call my manager.

Many Christian, but non Catholic denominations definitely do not use, or phased out the usage, of crosses ( also fish symbols/religious stamps/rosaries and so on) as they understand this fact

Also they understand that Matthew 16:24 is referring to a Stavros/stauros, literally a wooden torture stake/pole, in allegory to taking a heavy responsibility, in general, as previous context shows that spreading the lord's message, with the difficulties it may bring, to extract a heavy toll on the average person's life, up to the point of having to sacrifice said life

They also understand that even thought the old law have been abolished, the spirit of it keeps on on many of their aspects, so no worshipping idols of any kind (imaginary or physical) is seen as the practical approach

Sam Kinison had a routine where he was pretending to be Jesus explaining why he hadn't returned yet: "yeah, I'll be back as soon as I can PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN! OH OHHHHHHHH!"

The government just declassified documents that describe the first time humans made contact with an alien race. We found out that not only do the aliens know about Jesus, he revisits them every year for a big celebration. "Every year?” the humans asked, "We've been waiting for him to come back for over 2000 years! How did you get him to return?"
"I don't know, we're just friends. The first time he visited, we gave him a big bag of our finest chocolates. What did you guys do?"
- https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2008-11-24

“You think if Jesus comes back he ever wants to see another fucking cross? Thats probably why he hasn’t come back yet. ‘Nope, they’re still wearing crosses.’ That’s like walking up to Jacky Onassis wearing a rifle on your lapel. ‘Just thinking about John, Jacky.’” finger guns

Bill Hicks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzNfvz-nyO4

the whole point of Christianity is that Jesus sacrificed himself to absolve humanity of the original sin. The cross represents the sacrifice.

Yeah, but all that comes from Paul not Jesus himself.
- Exactly. ALL religion is a human construct to explain stuff that neolithic goatherders didn't understand. Some of them were a talented storytellers, and made up all that stuff to entertain their bored colleagues.
And yet having sacrificed himself, he's now back hanging out with his Dad in heaven and having a great time. That's not a "sacrifice", it's more like a bad time at summer camp.
- It was a bad three-day weekend.
Except earlier it said to have no idols. The cross is an idol. You can appreciate a sacrifice without using the tool that caused such sacrifice as a form of worship. If your father jumped in front of you and died to a gun shot, he sacrificed his life to save you and you would be appreciative. Would you then wear a gun necklace around your neck to show you love your dad and the sacrifice he made for you? By sanctifying his murder weapon?
Highly suspicious that we elected this representation of this sacrifice without written approval by Jesus himself, ey?
LIES THEY USED DIE FISHE SYMBOL IN ITS EARLIER LIFESPAN!!!!
- Read this like he said it
If God is all powerful then why not just absolve us from the sin?
If this sacrifice was required, then he is not all powerful or he is into torture pron.
- I'm not an expert in the Bible, but I don't think it really ascribes omnipotency to God. I think it's better to understand it as God being able to do all that can be done. So He may have limitations, but they are such that no other being can do something that He is unable to do.
  From that sense, He is not able to save humanity freely, but he can set forth a process through which He can achieve this goal with some cost. I.e., He can create a divine being (that is either Himself in whole, Himself in part, or a direct descendant of Himself depending on your interpretation) that is able to spread His message and display an act of extreme self-sacrifice.
  I don't really understand exactly what the sacrifice did or what needed to be fixed, but I do think the stories make a lot more sense if you accept that God has some limitations. For instance, I assume that Noah's flood was his first attempt to fix the problem (by killing everybody except for the most righteous of His creation), but it failed because He can't do everything and doesn't know everything. And the story of Jesus was His next attempt to sort things out.
  But that's just me thinking about them as fictional stories that really need to be edited rather than a divine and infallible truth.
Yeah, none of that makes sense. How much do you have to disengage your intelligence to somehow believe in that baloney enough to actually rule your life by it? Seriously weird.
- look pal i cant even be in a church without breaking out in hives, im just throwing out an easy explanation

Ironically, the cross is a symbol of unjust suffering. Something which the more prominent wearers like to inflict on others.

Everything about Christianity is basically backwards from what Jesus actually fucking said.
No idolatry is the first commandment for a reason. People that worship the idol of the cross have already failed to learn what the religion was to teach.
Basically, look at Republicans. They absolutely worship the flag yet at the same time defile everything the country supposedly stands for.
- 10 commandments are old testament, new testament says love your neighbor was the most important one.
No, it represents how Jezus died for our sins, so that we can be free to sin as we please.
- thank u jesus for letting us do trig

The American Christian message: Act like Jesus and we will crucify you too.

I can’t speak for everyone, but when I wear a cross it’s in reference to Matthew 16:24

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

To me the cross is symbolic of finding the courage to live our lives motivated by a radical love in order to overcome the fear of death and pain.

It’s like Goku once said while fighting to save the world “this is the power to go further beyond”

I feel though like wearing a token cross in honor of being told to take up a more literal cross seems like paying lip service to a very serious call to action with very low actual stakes.
Like being told to stand up to the guns of an army to stand firm for justice and then wearing little rifle pendants instead claiming that means you look to live your life consistent with that principle even as you stay well away from actual fighting.
You may personally of course live your life consistent with the values and that is just a symbol, but it's broadly a symbol that has been cheapened by casual overuse, and to some extent corrupted by folks using it as a symbol of their alignment to God and implied divine authority granted by that association.
- Yeah, in my opinion it shows the power consumer culture has to erode the meaning of things. “This symbol used to stand for something, but it got too popular and now it’s just slapped on stuff to sell merch.”
- It's a bit like being told to go out into the world and tell everyone about your religion, and you do it by taping a cardboard sheet to your front and back with "Jesus is Lord" written on it.
Potential problem:
The Greek word that is, in basically every English translation rendered as 'cross'... does not actually specifically mean 'cross'.
The word is stauros.
What it literally means is roughly a wooden 'pole' or 'stake', and was colloqiually used at the time to just refer to any configuration of wooden poles upon which one would be crucified... which, while yes, were often in the shape of a cross, they also often weren't... maybe a T, or an X, or just a straight pole.
It was also used... I don't think in the New Testament, but other Greek writings from the same time... to just mean large pieces of worked wood used in construction, even just 'a tree', though those uses rely a bit more on the surrounding context.
The English 'crucify' is built on the assumption that it was an actual cross. In greek, the verb for 'crucify' is stauroo, unconjugated; 'to fasten to a stake or pole.'
... Its kind of like how 'Matthew' incorrectly translates the Hebrew word almah into the Greek word for 'virgin', when he quotes Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:22-23, to say that Jesus' birth fulfils prophecy.
Almah, in Hebrew, just means 'young woman'... basically, of marriage age, so for the time, that would basically be... post-puberty, roughly 14, up to maybe early 20s.
It can mean 'virgin', but it does not specifically, necessarily mean 'virgin'... in roughly the same way in English, right now, a 'young woman' could be a vrigin, is probably more likely to be a virgin than an old woman, generally speaking... but it absolutely does not categorically mean 'virgin'.
That's definitely the intended meaning of wearing a cross, and a really powerful and important scripture.
It's worth remembering though that 'cross' isn't the word that Jesus said here but the Greek word recorded is stau·rosʹ which means execution or torture stake and the cross wasn't a contemporary use for impailment by the Romans, primarily because a stake was a much more painful death than a cross.
The cross was a pagan idol for many centuries before Jesus death and was later rolled into the account of Jesus' death by the later Christian Church to help with the conversion of those pagans.
- Do you have any sources on the claim that it wasn't a cross and was changed later for pagans? The scripture references "coming down" from the cross which to me would imply the one we typically think of.
  Also from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement,
  "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made differently by different [fabricators]; some individuals suspended their victims with heads inverted toward the ground; some drove a stake (stipes) through their excretory organs/genitals; others stretched out their [victims'] arms on a patibulum [cross bar]; I see racks, I see lashes ... "
  Sounds like Seneca, a figure from exactly this time period confirms the type of cross we think of.

Christianity is a man made religion shaped to control people in which you are supposed to "worship" a really high authority that cannot be questioned.

sounds like the government
Are their non man made religions I should know about?
I feel like dogs would have a good religion. I wanna subscribe to that.
- Most evenings, I sit on my front porch overlooking a quiet pond, and play my guitar for an hour or so, accompanied by birdsong. That's my religion.
- I like the part where they worship me.
- if one uses the broad meaning of "religion" then i'd say unorganized ones aren't really manmade, like hunter-gatherers just vaguely assuming the moon is "a spirit or something i guess" isn't comparable to christianity or islam.

Of course he liked crosses! There was even that one cross he used to hang at.

Nailed it.

I have always thought that choosing the cross as the universal symbol of Christianity is the most twisted and sad thing in the world.

That is why I prefer the Ichthys. It represents Jesus's high point, when he performed a miracle for the all the people. For me, it's better to remember people at their best than at their worst.

Referenced by my favorite Philip K Dick novel VALIS, the symbol of early Christianity: Fish cannot carry guns.
- The Vast Active Living Intelligent System.. I read that 30 years ago as a teenager and didn't really understand it then. He really hated Nixon though, even as a kid I could discern that much!
Oh, I always thought it was because he's a fisher of men.
- It also means that! The fish and the loaves, the fisher of men, the fish that Jesus ate after his resurrection. It is a symbol with a very broad meaning.
Looks ancient egypt to me.

Not a religious person here, but I think it's a metaphor, where we all are carrying a cross, like jesus did, but smaller... and lighter...

So not like Jesus at all then
- holly molly, you are not a person of metaphors, right?
just another example of Christians cherry picking what they what to use from their religion and using it out of context to better serve their agendas.

Not christian, but I would assume the cross is a reminder of Jesus dying for our sins.

You would be correct. My church growing up did NOT use crosses, instead remembering his life and not his death. That always made more sense to me.
- Not hating on your church or anything, but isn't his death the whole point? Like if he didn't die in that manner and then theoretically come back, he'd just be some guy. There'd be no need for the religion. I feel like his death makes the whole thing come full circle. It's not just about being good, it's about then being willing to sacrifice for the good of everyone.

Jesus is lord.

Cross defeats Jesus.

Cross is lord.

Christianity is just another weird death cult. I never understood why the Romans had an issue with him until I learned that Jesus was literally proselytizing that people were going to raise from the dead. I am not talking about the afterlife, he was saying that people are going to unalive and his kingdom would be on this earth with everyone who died coming back to life.

Fucking whacko to say the least and then sure enough his cult had him come back to life like he said everyone else would. Sooo yeah they were fucking crazy and so is everyone who thinks a ancient book contains all the answers. Hint: it doesn't.

It was inherited from Zoroastrianrism.

its because the roman empire hijacked the religion and after their collapse the leftovers (Catholic church) forced an entire continent into 1000 years of oppression.

Be more specific. Constantine did it, he blended Christianity with the Roman religion in the most convenient way possible

The cross is important because Christ's death was a Sacrifice.....in a similar way to offering a live animal on an altar, or offering incense to a god. Its this sacrifice (his crucifixion) that saves us.

As an atheist I appreciate that Jesus was willing to die for what he believed in. He saw injustice in the world and took action even at the cost of himself. That's what I see in the cross.
- But that's not why he died. He didn't take a bullet for his friend, he freely offered himself as a sacrifice for our sin. This is what saves us from unending death. That's why the cross is important. His death was more similar to an Animal that is sacrificed by the local shaman then a soldier who gets killed fighting against terrorists.
Exactly. And the sacrifice refers not to Jesus's suffering and persecution, but what humanity gave up in that sacrifice - God's active, personal presence on Earth.
If you're not religious, it all means nothing,of course.
- I think that is actually a terrible deal. He could probably have just waved any sin away or something.
  Oh well, don't believe in it anyway.
- Fairy tales

The Roman/Western imperialist mind can only worship pain and suffering?