subject: What the Crucifixion Really Means [print this page] Jesus said something incredibly profound when he commented, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Another time he said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; forit is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs."
What each of us needs more than anything is the ability to engage in cross-examination. The crucifixion of Jesus on the cross is a graphic depiction of what we do to ourselves every time we deny who we really are, and what we do to others every time we encourage them to be inauthenticas adults do so much especially with children.
That old word "repentance," which has been horribly distorted by so many churches, comes into play here. It's a word that denotestransformation, and it asks us to open ourselves up, admit we're hurting, and recognize the countless ways that adult society has taught us to crucify the beautiful self each of us was as a child.
It's in childhood that the process of self-crucifixion begins, and it happens in the most well-intentioned and subtle ways.
For instance, a physician was on her way to preschool with her then-four-year-old daughter. The doctor had left her stethoscope on the car seat, and her little girl picked it up and began playing with it. "Be still, my heart," thought the doctor, "my daughter wants to follow in my footsteps!"
Then the child spoke into the instrument: "Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order?"
This story is particularly insightful in terms of how we teach children to abandon themselves, because it shows that even when a parent triesnot to influence a child away from the child's deepest self-expression, McDonald's has already done it for us.
In other words, the whole of society is one massive conspiracy to keep us from knowing our true being.
We are all caught up in a collective unconsciousness. Which is why Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, forthey know not what they do."
Our culture tends not to honor a child's self-interest. Jesus flies in the face of this by claiming that children are the natural born citizens of the kingdom of God. This kingdom, he said, is within usand children experience it spontaneously, as they are simply real, simply themselves.
To be in touch with and live from the divine Presence at the heart of our being is to experience the kingdom. This is the hope of the ages, the destiny of the spiritual journey. It's what spirituality is all about: the manifestation of the divine in human form.
I think any expression of spirituality that fails to lead us to cross-examination of ourselves misses the boat. Centers of spiritualitywhether churches, temples, mosques, or whatever form of corporate expression of spiritualityought to enable us to face up to how we crucify our children as a society, and how we have crucified ourselves ever since we were children.
The cross, long a symbol of self-hatred, when rightly understood chases us out of hating ourselves.
My friend Sebastian Moore points out that at the end of Ayn Rand'sAtlas Shrugged, the supreme phony, who has been applying electrical torture to the good man, suddenly realizes the whole of his life has been a grotesque act of self-loathing.
This is what the cross of Jesus is meant to do for us. The bloodstained figure reflects back to us as betrayal of ourselves what we otherwise think of as a normal, acceptable, decent life.
Without realizing it, we, in our everyday mediocrity, are engaging in a grotesque act of self-loathing. This is what "sin" is, a word used in archery: we miss the bull's eye of our true being, putting ourselves down, thinking poorly of ourselves, reacting emotionally instead of knowing the love, joy, and peace of our divine essence.
And so St. Paul was moved to say to people in his day, "I have been determined to know nothing among you other than Jesus Christ, and him crucified."
The cross depicts our beautiful selves, mirrored in the symbol of Jesus, but crucified by lifestyles that disown the naturalness, the spontaneity, the wonder, the excitement, the adventure of the life of the child.
The heart of spirituality is the recovery of this wonderful self each of us was as a child, and must learn to be again. Such a recovery is to experience the kingdom of heaven, which has always been our true though clouded-over state.
