The Goodness of Good Friday
My kids are at the age where they understand just enough to NOT understand why we call it Good Friday. I've been swimming in Christian lingo and mindset for so long that the utter strangeness of the cross starts to "make sense" in ways that it really doesn't from a merely human perspective. I say it "makes sense" because we talk about it so much that it starts to feel normal: that our God would die on a cross. We sing songs about the cross. We wear them around our necks, and we talk effortlessly about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. It has begun to feel almost obvious--as though the one through whom all things were created would obviously die on a cross for us. In my seminary class, we're looking at the works of Paul as he helped the early church deal with the newness of faith in Jesus. One of the big hangups was the idea that anyone of any importance could possibly have been crucified. It was, likewise, strange to think of a multinational grou...