Cross-Bearing

I’ve been thinking a lot about crosses lately. I daresay that sounds a strange topic of thought — it’s C.S. Lewis’s fault. Between Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, I’m getting a lot of input about what Jesus meant when He said that each of His followers must “deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me….” (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23) And in Matthew 10:37–38, Jesus said that anyone who was not willing to give up even his parents and siblings, take up his cross, and follow Jesus was not worthy of Him. Those are hard sayings. What do they mean?

The first question is: What is my cross? And it seems that everyone’s cross is different. Jesus doesn’t say, “take up a cross” or “take up the cross.” He said “take up his cross.” That tells me that my cross and your cross are probably two different things.

My heaviest cross at present is the effects of the car wreck I was in nearly five years ago. That wreck stole part of my personality, damaged my capacity for what my doctor calls “executive ability,” and left me with a speech impediment, panic attacks, and an explosive temper.

There are other crosses: Not being home with my children and having to go to the office every day. (Those of my friends who get to be stay-home mothers are so blessed! And they are a constant and very real temptation to envy for me. Another cross.) Not having enough money to do the things I want to do.

But Lewis says that there are other, smaller crosses to bear. The traffic jam that makes me late to an appointment. The woman who is screaming at me on the phone. The illness that forces me to miss karate class. Having to work on a team project with a person I dislike. All of the annoyances and irritations of the day — crosses.

The important point is that I am to bear these crosses as Jesus bore His: humbly and meekly, without shouting, threatening, or complaining. I won’t say “without protest” — He did, after all, beg God in Gethsemane Garden to please “let this cup pass” without His having to drink it. But, once it was clear that the cup had to be drunk, Jesus tipped it up and swallowed the draught to the very bottom, dregs and all. Once it was clear that the Crucifixion was an inescapable task, He went without further complaint.

That’s the hardest bit for me. I want to grumble or whine or explode in anger at the circumstances. I don’t want to accept that this is my appointed cross and bear it meekly. I want to fight. To rage. To resist. To finagle my way out of it. I don’t want to carry a cross. It’s no fun. Crosses are painful, uncomfortable, lethal.

But if I reject the cross that is appointed to me, I am not worthy of the Lord. If I rebel against the task I am given, I reject the very nature of the Master I have vowed to serve.

Like a loving parent, God is tolerant and compassionate when we fail, if only we have tried to complete our task. But with rebellion or shirking, He must be firm. He is still loving, but it is the stern, tough love that allows for consequences, rather than the tender, gentle love that praises even feeble efforts and lifts you back to your feet when you fall.

So I must weigh my choices. Bear the pain that is my cross patiently, willingly, manfully? Or refuse the pain of that cross, only to find myself suffering the pain of consequences? Try, even when I am afraid I will fail? Or refuse to try and spend my life wondering “What if?”

Oddly enough, I got a lesson about that last night. I’ve discovered the joys of board-breaking. So I picked up some supplies yesterday on my lunch break. I wanted to practice this new skill, and I wanted to try breaking two at once. Just to see if I could. I would once have been too scared of the pain to even try it. But karate’s been good for me in that respect. Pain doesn’t scare me quite so much as it used to. It’s just pain.

So I set up and broke a couple of singles to warm up. I didn’t orient the first one properly, and when I hit it, it didn’t break. That was painful. Once I got them properly oriented, though, I broke them with no problems. And no pain. So I stacked two together. When I hit them, nothing happened. Well, nothing but pain. Then someone said that they’d heard that it was better to separate them with small pieces of wood, like pencils. So I grabbed a couple of broken pieces, separated the boards, and tried again. This time, I broke through the first board, but not the second.

I bruised my hand last night. Probably on that first hit. You can’t break a board across the grain. (I think. Maybe someone with more skill and training could, but newbies like me sure can’t.) But that bruise is not going to stop me from trying again. It’s only a bruise. It’s only a moment of pain if you screw up. Better a little bruise on my hand while learning to protect and defend myself, than a devastating injury because I could not protect myself in time of need.

(And yes, I see board-breaking as part of self-defence. I don’t routinely smash solid objects. But if I don’t know what it feels like to hit something hard and follow through, then when I need to protect myself, I may be too scared, or too poorly-conditioned, to do it right. So the board-breaking, for me, is about conditioning. Getting the feel of what I’ve been practicing on air-shields in class. That it is fun and a good way to release stress is merely a fringe benefit.)

How does that tie into the “cross-bearing” thing? Two ways. First, if you are trying to break a board, you don’t stop when you touch the board. You have to keep going through the target. If you stop too soon, you are likely to get hurt. Likewise, if you drop your cross before the end of the road, you are liable to get hurt. You have to push your cross-bearing past the finish line, so that you don’t quit before you have achieved the goal.

The second way it ties into “cross-bearing” is through failure. When I struck the boards and they didn’t break, it hurt. But I’ve learned from the mistakes. I doubt I’ll get the orientation wrong again, and I’m going to get instruction from my Sensei before I go for two again. If I pick up my cross and fail to carry it to the end of the line, it’s going to hurt. Failure is painful. But God will still be pleased that I tried, and He will not scold me. He will instruct me in preparation for my next attempt. But if I refuse to pick up my cross, out of fear, or rebellion, or reluctance to experience pain, I will experience far worse, and more lasting pain — I will have to deal with both the consequences of my refusal and also with God’s disappointment.

Even those who try and fail get to hear “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter now into the place of rest.” But the rebels and shirkers do not. They hear, “Cast this wicked and lazy servant into outer darkness.” (See Matthew 25:14-46.)

What I wish to keep before myself, today and every day, is that the pain of the present cross is nothing in comparison to the pain of disappointing God. I would rather avoid the latter by suffering the former as I follow in the footsteps of my Master.

Tags: challenges, character, Christianity, faith, fear, grace, Jesus, karate, pain, parenting, Philosophy, Religion, True Stories