Easter: Rethinking the Cross

I read this article this morning by Wayne Jacobsen and loved it!

When I hear the gospel recited by word and life what I hear most often communicated is an angry God looking for someone to whack. 

Jesus is compassionate but God is going to "get me" if I make a mistake. 

Wayne nails it here:

Something about the story made me cringe every time I heard it, and since I grew up a Baptist, I heard it a lot: To satisfy His need for justice and His demand for holiness, God sentenced His own Son to death in the brutal agony of a crucifixion as punishment for the failures and excesses of humanity.

Don't get me wrong. I want as much mercy as I can get. If someone else wants to take a punishment I deserve and I get off scot free, I'm fine with that. But what does this narrative force us to conclude about the nature of God?

As we approach Easter, the crucifixion story most often told paints God as an angry, blood-thirsty deity whose appetite for vengeance can only be satisfied by the death of an innocent—the most compassionate and gracious human that ever lived. Am I the only one who struggles with that? The case could be made that it makes God not much different from Molech, Baal or any of the other false deities that required human sacrifice to sate their uncontrollable rage. read more

I highly recommend Wayne's book, "He Loves Me" for those who want more.