The crosses we bear

John Howard Yoder. 

Ever heard of him?

If not, I highly recommend taking a gander at his book entitled The Politics of Jesus. He gives interesting insight on the "type" of Jesus that people prefer. I was particularly drawn to his discussion of the term "bearing the cross." The following is an excerpt from the above mentioned book:

"Only at one point, only on one subject--but then consistently, universally-- is Jesus our example: in His cross. This much could have been said without special attention to our learnings from Luke. But all of this language of imitation and participation, all the pious and pastoral meditation on the believers cross takes on a new dimension if we take the measure of the social character of Jesus' cross. 

The believers cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of what is commanded. The believers cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social non-conformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther's or Thomas Müntzers or Zinzendorf's or Kierkegaard's cross or Anfechtung, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come. The word: 

      "The servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me they will persecute you. (John 15:20)

is not a pastoral counsel to help with the ambiguities of life; it is a normative statement about the relation of our social obedience to the messianity of Jesus. Representing as he did the divine order now at hand, accessible; renouncing as he did the legitimate use of violence and the accrediting of the existing authorities; renouncing as well the ritual purity of non-involvment, his people will encounter in ways analogous to his own the hostility of the old order.

Being human, Jesus must have been subject somehow or other to testing of pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust; but it does not enter into the concerns of the Gospel writer to give us any information about any struggles he may have had with their attraction. The one temptation the man Jesus faced--and face again and again--as a constitutive element of his public ministry, was the temptation to exercise social responsibility, in the interest of justified revolution, through the use of available violent methods. Social withdrawal was no temptation to him; that option (which most Christians take part of the time) was excluded at any outset. Any alliance with the Sadducean establishment in the exercise of conservative social responsibility (which most christians choose the rest of the time) was likewise excluded at the outset. We understand Jesus only if we can empathize with this threefold rejection: the self-evident, axiomatic, sweeping rejection of both quietism and establishment responsibility, and the difficult constantly reopened, genuinely attractive option of the crusade."

After reading this, what then is the point of bearing the cross? Is it through enduring as much suffering as possible that we become Christlike? If so what constitutes as suffering if, as it seems, it is an extremely relative term?

For so long we've been taught that any kind of suffering or trial we endure is considered "bearing our cross."But we forget that the cross was meant to be a public death. It was a sort of public humiliation. Jesus constantly fought the social norm. He came to change the world, more importantly, he came to change society. How then can we compare our minute struggles to bearing a cross? The cross was heavy, the cross was a symbol of death. We die to ourselves not for the sake of ourselves, but for the sake of our brother. Jesus didn't take up the cross to make His life better. He took it to make our lives better.

Now then, as a part of Christian ethics, wouldn't bearing your cross as a propellor to further your individual overall state of being be a contradiction to the purpose of the cross? Furthermore, wouldn't it constitute as unethical if our intentions are self-promoting? 

The crosses we bear are not parallel to the cross Christ bore. He broke social boundaries. And us? We sit quietly in our churches and homes, and the only time sociality takes place is when we go out to eat in our designated cliques and crews. Christ-like? Not in the least. Church--your cross should be like that of Christs. Persecution for public displays of Godliness. Persecution for incessant preaching and praying. Everywhere Jesus went He was about the fathers business. Every city, every town, every house. That was his cross, and it should be ours as well.