Posted on 08/26/2012 9:26:56 AM PDT by GiovannaNicoletta
The World Trade Center Cross, also known as the Ground Zero Cross, is a group of steel beams found amidst the debris of the World Trade Center following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The crossed beams are in the exact proportions to form the shape of a typical Christian cross. For many American Christians, the twisted pieces of metal became a symbol of hope and comfort.
But it isn't a Christian cross in the sense that it was built, designed or assembled by any particular human being to symbolize any particular religion. It wasn't constructed on government land and neither was it paid for by government dollars.Ground Zero Cross
The Ground Zero Cross is actually a piece of debris left over from the first enemy attack on the US mainland since the War of 1812. No government proclamation made these two pieces of metal a religious symbol.
It is what it is and NOBODY made it. (At least, nobody over Whom the US federal courts have any jurisdiction.) It is either the result of an act of Islamic terror, or it was created as an act of God. In either case, it is not the result of any human creative effort.
If one is a believer, then one is justified in concluding that God made it. But if one is an atheist, what conclusion should one reach?
A group called 'the American Atheists' concluded that it is a Christian cross, which, given the circumstances, evidently means they reached the exact same conclusion. God had to have made it.
Otherwise, it would just be a piece of debris from the World Trade Center.
American Atheists President David Silverman sued on the grounds that the World Trade Center Cross is an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. But as we've already carefully noted, the alleged "religious icon" is a piece of debris from the World Trade Center.
It is only a cross if one chooses to interpret it that way and one can only interpret it that way if one believes it was deliberately constructed. Otherwise, it is a piece of debris.
The American Atheist position is that it is a Christian Cross, which is the absurd contention that because it is a cross, it must have been made by God, since it would otherwise be a random piece of debris.
However, they also argue that God is not allowed to exist under the Constitution, and so displaying it violates their rights as guaranteed them by, to quote the Declaration of Independence, "Nature's God."
The World Trade Center Memorial Museum wants to include the Cross as part of its museum exhibit.
For the record, I will call it 'a cross' because I firmly believe it is a Christian Cross fashioned by God Himself -- but I also believe that God exists, which would seem a prerequisite for seeing it as anything other than a piece of debris.
Otherwise, what the American Atheists are suing over is something that exists in someone else's mind. Unless I am missing something.
If I did not believe that God existed, then it could not possibly be a Christian Cross, since it is literally a piece of random debris.
For an unbeliever to argue that a piece of debris from the World Trade Center is actually a Christian Cross makes as much sense (for an unbeliever) as for him to argue that the scorch pattern on a piece of toast is actually the Image of Jesus.
If somebody else thinks that piece of toast is a sacred icon, does that mean that it is an actual picture of Jesus? If you see a picture of Jesus in a piece of toast, (but you don't believe in Jesus), then what you need is a psychiatric consultation, not a legal one.
The atheists are suing on the grounds that the mere existence of the Ground Zero Cross makes them physically sick, something they apparently believes violates their God-given rights under the Constitution.
"Nonsense, says a new friend-of-the-court brief to be filed Monday in the case by the American Center for Law and Justice. The brief, which carries the signatures of more than 100,000 people, argues there have been no known sightings of suicides or uncontrolled vomiting at or around the Ground Zero cross.
“The legal argument is absurd,” ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow charged Wednesday. American Atheists, he said “is making some astonishing claims.”
The group contends the placement of the 17-foot-tall symbol at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum is making some atheists unbearably sick.
“The plaintiffs, and each of them, are suffering, and will continue to suffer damages, both physical and emotional, from the existence of the challenged cross,” the lawsuit American Atheists v. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey states. “Named plaintiffs have suffered …. dyspepsia, symptoms of depression, headaches, anxiety, and mental pain and anguish from the knowledge that they are made to feel officially excluded from the ranks of citizens who were directly injured by the 9/11 attack.”
Atheists claim that they are simply following the voice of reason and the reason that they would like everybody else to stop believing in God is because they find it personally offensive.
This idiotic claim that they feel officially excluded is a variation on the atheists' meme that because Christians believe that only Christians will go to heaven, Christianity is "hateful".
Atheists don't believe in God. They don't believe in Heaven. They believe that God is an imaginary friend and heaven is an imaginary place but they want to be allowed in or they will sue.
It is the equivalent absurdity of suing Peter, Paul and Mary because only Jackie Paper was allowed into the Land of Honnalee to visit Puff the Magic Dragon, but that is their main bone of contention, nonetheless.
The lawsuit demands that the undesigned piece of debris either be removed, or that some human being construct a seventeen foot tall "A" as a memorial to atheism, which is to say, a memorial to the belief in nothing.
The astonishing thing about this lawsuit is the fact that there is actually a judge somewhere in America that actually believes this lawsuit has enough merit to be heard.
“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” ... Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Thus says the LORD: “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls…” Jeremiah 6:16
Giovanna has hit on part of the root of what is going wrong. It’s all about much, much more than the economy....or mere politics. I direct all good Freepers to this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2923007/posts
Since when did Christian crosses have "exact proportions"? Are archaeologists and historians even in agreement over whether the actual Roman cross was shaped like a 'T' or a 't'?
I’ll take it if they don’t want it anymore. I’ll even come pick it up. I still have enough vacation built up to take a few days to make the drive. What a piece of history to have and to display.
Nevertheless, not enough breath can be taken in so as to give relief -- no, only enough to prolong existence and increase the urgency of the next cycle of excruciating flexure.
Some loose-brained fickle-hearted cheaply motivated romanticists seem to think this instrument to exact the last possible microsecond of the most final scintilla of flashing neuronic shock is an object of adoration! Merely an article of rough wood furniture to CLING to, rather than to regard as the engine of utmost, absolute, insuperable horror, dishonor, and disgrace.
Oh, the undiscerning, idiotic mind that produces the thought "I will cling to that old, rugged cross!"--how imbecilic! would one make a hang-noose, or guillotine, or electric chair the daily object of their genuflection? NO! How is that ... possible? ... imaginable?
No! but I will cling to the Christ of the Cross, who bore in his body my sins, every neuron synapse of His writhing in edema-amplified insult, as long as the engine of thrumming death could make it, but then, Aaaah! the last utter final relief of "Teteletestai! IT...STANDS...FINISHED!" and then -- "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit" and thus, giving up the ghost for a sweet respite, the first second being the longest.
Now, with this in mind, do you want a mockup of The Cross on your back lawn? to deliberate on day by day?
Not me.
But the Steel Cross, the stipes and patibula of horror, that has been Providentially set in the midst of the remembrance of the twin towers, should it not remind thoughtful humans forever of the ingenuity of the demonic perpetrators of their hate written in the flesh of innocent ones scooped into their cauldron of fire and destruction?
I think that Steel Cross is the very figurative imagery that should remain beyond our time, to point to the results of the Islamic torrent about to engulf us if we do not remember and resist!
Let that Steel Cross from The Towers, placed by the determinate Will of The God, the emblem as always and ever of cruel murderous machinations, never be removed!
It looks like the crosses one sees on the top of Christian churches. So, what’s your point?
They are sick with rage, like a frustrated two-year old who wants us to do what he wants.
Point is, there's no such thing as "exact proportions" for crosses. Otherwise, even telephone poles could be misconstrued as crosses.
If He had not died that horrible death on a cross, our doom would be sealed forever. It is because of His dying upon the cross that Jesus is such a indescribably, beloved hero to us.
Galatians 6:14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
Thank you for your response, but I did not say what I said without very careful thought.
And I have been considering that event with close scrutiny for some 41 years, while gratefully enjoying the loosing from eternal consequences conferred upon me by virtue of being declared judicially freed of guilt by His Resurrection of His Body out of the dead ones; and not only justified, but also offered never-ending friendship by The Mighty God, His Righteous demands having been totally met and satisfied through the ransom price paid with the Incorruptible ever-fresh coin of the realm, the life-containing Blood of His, offered by my Eternal High Priest at the true Mercyseat of Heaven, and accepted by the Father. He did not take the engine of His humility and agony to Heaven with Him. We know less of what it even looked like, except from Roman literature, than we do of Him. (That is not much either, but we do know He took His body, with its wounds, His mannerisms, and did not have long hair like a woman's. He was a Nazarene, not a Nazarite -- Ezek 44:20, 1 Cor. 11:14)
We cannot glory or adore the literal, physical cross, even were it appropriate, for we do not even know its form.
If He had not died that horrible death on a cross, our doom would be sealed forever. It is because of His dying upon the cross that Jesus is such a indescribably, beloved hero to us.
No, though well-meant, your doctrinal thrust is not correct here. It is not His physical death, the separation of soul and spirit from the physical body, that made amendments for error-bent humans. It was the rejection, alienation, humiliation, agony, grief, defilement, and shame from mankind and The God for the cause of both personifying Sin (2 Cor. 5:21), bearing our sins in his body on that Tree (1 Pet. 2:24), enduring while He was yet alive the full maliciousness of men for being The Son of The God, and voluntarily subjecting Himself to the furious righteous retribution of The God for being The Son Of Humans.
Yet this alone did not bring salvation. It was His exsanguination, with the presentation of the life-bearing product as our High Priest and Mediator, that produced the Pardon; that is, the transaction of offering an exchange of His righteousness to be accepted by us individually and accountability, for all our sin and its guiltiness as accepted and paid for by Him, in an even trade.
It was not His death that bought us -- it was his life, agony, and shed blood as the price for forgiveness and reconciliation.(Rom. 3:25; Col. 1:14,20; Heb. 9:12,21, 10:19, 13:11,12; 1 Pet. 1:19; 1 Jn. 1:7)
Galatians 6:14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
Here is the point, exquisite in grammar, of interpretation as to what is being said by Paul. Some are wrongly interpreting this passage as Paul saying that he is glorying in a literal, physical, historical engine of torture fabricated by joining two timbers into a cross assembly. That is not what is to be inferred here, neither should we "cling" to such a tangible item in adoration. His immolation on it and as a part of its design lent not a smidgin of holiness to it. That is why God has not permitted the preservation or even a description of it, nor a relic, lest it should encourage the ignorant reverential idolatry of it, as did Aaron's rod in old days, which removed. (Num. 17:10, 1 Kings 8:9)
What we are to bring into view and contemplation is the literal, historical account of the Savior's final experience under the Law, which comes under the metonomy represented by the word "Cross," which is thus a figure of speech, not an object of worship or liturgical device.
So, the correct thought here is that Paul is implying, in literal (not allegorized) language, that figuratively speaking, he is glorying in the cross-experience of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which Christ has, to Paul, permitted the world's system (kosmos another metonomy) be put to death in relation to himself, Paul; and Paul's desires to be no longer influenced by the world's culture. was the kosmos or Paul crucified? Only figuratively in this passage.
Paul is not glorying or magnifying a physical engine of death. Neither should you nor I.
Let us rather glory in the LORD's person, and in His Gospel to be preached and The Faith of Him to be taught.
"Thou hadst given a banner to them that fear Thee, that it may be displayed because of The Truth. Selah" (Ps 60:4)
I kind of like the patriarchal one, since the short cross-beam denotes the sign ordered by Pontius Pilate: "Iesus Nazareni Rex Ioudaeorum" in three languages, to which the religionists objected, but were silenced.
Also, there is another execution framework, that used for Andrew, which is a criss, an X, rather than a cross (+). It appears on the National Flag of the Land of the Scots, in white on blue.
When combined with the red-on-white Cross of George of the National Ensign of the Land of the Engs, you have a criss-cross, which is the red, white, and blue glorious Union Jack of Britain.
I agree with you 100% that we are not to bow down and venerate them as Catholics do, making the signs that are meant to enhance our understanding and appreciation of great truths into idols.
Also, the cross itself was a very important part of our salvation, as it was wood, and made from the trunk of a tree, and because Jesus was hung on a tree, He became a curse for us, in our place, as anyone that is hung on a tree is cursed.
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Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed [is] every one that hangeth on a tree:
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Mathew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
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1Corintheans 1:17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
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