On Twitter, one Jehovah’s Witness asks, “If the one you loved was murdered by someone using an assault rifle would you wear its image[?]” Obviously he expects a negative answer. In saying this he not only imagines he has made a decisive argument, but he is echoing several Watchtower publications. For instance, the November 8, 1972 Awake!, p. 27 states:[1]
“HOW would you feel if one of your dearest friends was executed on false charges? Would you make a replica of the instrument of execution, say a hangman’s noose or an electric chair? Would you kiss that replica, burn candles before it or wear it around your neck as an ornament? ‘Of course not,’ you may say.
“But are not millions of persons, in effect, doing that? Do they not speak of Jesus Christ as their dearest friend, who showed his love for them by giving up his life? Do they not say that Jesus, though guilty of no sin, was executed on a cross? Yet, are not crosses displayed in their churches, their homes and on their person? Do not many people even kiss crosses, burn candles in front of them and bow before them? How did such a thing come about?”
Setting aside that these publications conflate many religious uses of the cross, and ignoring their other ahistorical arguments against the cross, let us note that this is one of the weakest arguments that they could have come up with. For the case of Christ dying, and dying specifically upon the cross, is obviously very disanalogous to the unjust death of a loved one by firearm. Observe how central the cross is in the theology, preaching, and spiritual life of the Apostle Paul. See how clear he makes it that “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23) and that he does not boast “except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”. (Galatians 6:14) By no means is he afraid of or intent on abolishing “the stumbling block of the cross”. (Galatians 5:11) Indeed, he had “determined to know nothing among [the Corinthians] except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” It was insufficient to preach Jesus Christ, or even on his death as such. But it was necessary to emphasize that he died such a death as this, “even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:8) And it was to this cross that Christ himself compared the life of discipleship. “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24)
To depict the cross of Jesus in a religious setting is hardly impiety or tantamount to the betrayal of a close friend. If it was, one would be able to justly find fault with the Apostle Paul for making the ostensibly inglorious instrument of Christ’s death so central to his theology and preaching. But on the contrary, to depict the cross in a religious setting, by adorning one’s church with it or one’s body with it, merely physically embodies a lodestar of the Apostle’s thought and the epitome of Christian discipleship: the crucifixion of Christ. It serves as an implicit reminder that we have been “united with Him in the likeness of His death . . . [when] our old self was crucified with Him.” (Romans 6:5-6).
Nor should it be forgotten that Witnesses once decorated their own literature and even persons with the (crown and) cross. True, they think they have purified themselves of a pagan symbol by waging war against that most wonderful of monuments to God’s grace. Nevertheless they themselves still depict Christ upon the stake that they think he was killed on. Let us, therefore, ask them: If a friend of yours was killed unjustly would you expend effort depicting his death to adorn your magazines and books that could otherwise do without it? Surely, you would not. And yet, they do thus with Christ. Perhaps it is because they are aware of the sublimity of the cross of Christ upon which the Savior was crucified and salvation won. But if this is so, let them cease inveighing against those who adorn their churches or person with the cross of Christ, by means of which He has saved them.
The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.
