Scared of the Cross

As a child I was afraid of the cross. Crosses with Jesus’ bloody body terrified me, but even the empty ones I saw in my father’s Lutheran church gave me shivers.

My father was a liberal Protestant, but my grandfather, who was also a minister, held a more traditional view of atonement theology. He believed that all the world’s sinful souls were responsible for Jesus’ suffering. In Sunday school I colored in Jesus’ crown of thorns, brown for brambles and red for dripping blood. On the wall of my bedroom hung a small white cross that glowed purple at night, reminding me—even in the sanctuary of my bed—that I had contributed to an innocent man’s murder. In one particularly scary sermon, my grandfather held up his pectoral cross and said it might as well be an electric chair.