The Story Of The Cross In Today’s World
One of the biggest difficulties we face, in trying to figure out the place of the story of the cross in today’s world, is that we live in a postmodern world, in which, it is said, there is no place at all for a metastory – like the story of the cross – anymore.
A ‘metastory’, or a ‘metanarrative’, is ‘a big story that gives meaning to the smaller stories of our everyday lives’. We used to derive meaning from metastories, like the myth of progress, because these metanarratives gave us a reason to believe that, in the end, everything would be okay. However, over time, we discovered that many meta-stories were self-serving metanarratives – manipulative, oppressive, and exploitative. So we were left with the suspicion that many of our favourite metastories were false.
Along with widespread skepticism about metastories in general, there is also a lot of cynicism about the story of the cross as a metastory in particular. ‘What, after all, is the cross of Jesus Christ?’ asks Joachim Kahl. Answering his own question, he poignantly replies: ‘It is nothing but the sum total of a sado-masochistic glorification of pain!’
Dorothee Soelle, the insightful writer of the classic book, Suffering, understands the outrage of critics like Joachim Kahl. She says that many theologians she knows have told the story of the cross in a way that, in the final analysis, has amounted to ‘ nothing but the sum total of a sado-masochistic glorification of pain.’ And that, she declares, included her famous compatriot Jurgen Moltmann, the well-known author of a much-loved masterpiece on the story of the cross.
Soelle points out that in ‘The Crucified God’ Moltmann depicted Jesus on the cross as ‘suffering at the hands of God’ . Which, she argues, amounted to an understanding of suffering as a process in which one member of the community of God masochistically endures the excruciating pain that another member of the community of God sadistically inflicts on him’.
Soelle asks: ‘Who wants such a God? A theology that is developed from this starting point will end up worshipping the executioner.’ And ‘worshipping the executioner’, in one way or another, is exactly what many believers have done – with devastating consequences. Millions of innocent men, women, and children, have been tortured and slaughtered. If you don’t believe me, just ask a Holocaust survivor or Rwandan refugee!
Where can we go from here?
On the one hand, we know we need a metanarrative. Without a metastory we are left with a collection of disconnected stories, but with no larger story that we can use to put our little stories together. Only a metanarrative can provide a framework of on which we can weave the unifying fabric of community from the diverse threads that are our lives.
On the other hand, the metanarrative we hold dear has seemingly failed to provide the metastory we need. Instead of creating unity in diversity, the story of the cross has often been used to rationalize ethnic cleansing and justify genocide again and again.
Where we go from here with the story of the cross depends on whether we see the problems with it as intrinsic, or extrinsic. If you see the problems as intrinsic to the story – in the very nature of the story itself – you have to discard the story of the cross as a useful metastory once and for all. But if you see the problems not as intrinsic, but as extrinsic – not in the nature of the story, but in the manner in which it has been told – then what you have to discard is the telling of the story, rather than the story itself.
I, for one, see the problems associated with the story of the cross as problems that are associated with the manner in which the story has been told, rather than with the nature of the story itself.
I don’t think we need to look for a new story. But we do need to look for a new way of telling of the story. We need to find a new way of telling the ‘old, old story’; which rescues it from its terminal association with sado-masochism; and restores it to its true position as ‘the greatest love story ever told’. Then, and only then, will the story of the cross be able to take its place as the metastory we need to help us with the process of deconstructing and reconstructing our postmodern world.
The irrepressible religious broadcaster, Tom Wright, says, ‘It would be silly to claim Jesus as the first great postmodernist, but the grain of truth in such a suggestion should be obvious. His actions were coded ways of deconstructing (his world). Whatever Jesus was up to on Good Friday, it was not a covert power play. Violence, he insisted, could never be the way of bringing God’s justice to the world. From the very beginning Christians have seen the crucifixion of Jesus as the greatest act of divine generosity.’
This story challenges all other metanarratives. Not as ‘one power play to another’. But as ‘the subversion of all power plays’. Tragically, ‘Christians have been constantly tempted to turn (the) message of love into a means of self-aggrandizement’. And ‘then the story becomes the sort of metanarrative that postmodernity justifiably objects to’. But, in spite of the many times the gospel has been turned into propaganda, this story has managed to retain its integrity, and reassert its never-dominated, never-dominating quality, subverting ‘the power plays’ of those who try to co-opt it for their own purposes.
The story of the cross is a metanarrative that ‘can never be deconstructed in the way that postmodernity has deconstructed the stories of modernism’, because ‘it is a story of love…risky and costly love…the self-giving love of God’ – that is the very antithesis of all our modern self-serving metanarratives.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday this Easter I will explore the significance of the story for today’s world.
Dave Andrews