The Cross is an Offense Today

I rarely post a quote from a book I’m editing, but this one struck me today. It’s from the forthcoming book The Church Under the Cross by William Powell Tuck. Here it is:

Jesus Christ has called us to a way of life which demands sacrificial living, and this call is still an offense to us today. Oh, we don’t mind hearing sermons about the cross, as long as they tell us about what God did for us in Christ. We don’t mind hearing songs about the cross. We don’t even mind singing songs about the cross or depicting the cross in paintings, sculptures, stained glass windows, or wearing the image around our nicks or on our lapels. But when we begin to realize that the cross is supposed to be a way of life, it is even more offensive to us today. Few people really live a sacrificial kind of life. But Jesus has called us to the cross-like way of life (p. 65).

How easily we wear the symbol, often made out of gold (or gold-plated), but how difficult we find it to make the symbol a part of our daily life. I think we might well find it offensive to think that the symbol we wear or admire in art should change our lives.