I have heard many a person say something such as, "This arthritis is my cross to bear." But taking up the cross has nothing to do with stoic endurance. Taking up the cross is voluntary. Unlike arthritis, it is something that can be put back down and walked away from. And it is paired with self-denial, the voluntary giving up of my prerogatives, my advantages, my rights, even my life, for the sake of God and the other.
We Americans, with our focus on individualism, consumerism, and personal choice, have a hard time with self denial. But we do recognize that it is sometimes necessary. We may deny ourselves something we want because we need to save for a child's education. And we may deny ourselves that tempting dessert because we know we must if we want to maintain or lose weight. But America's obesity epidemic would seem to indicate that we're having more difficulty with self denial even when it is clearly advantageous to us.
Our Congress' recent dysfunctional behavior around the debt ceiling seems to me symptomatic of our problem with self denial. The dysfunction in Washington is fed by a popular dysfunction that wants the world's top military, social security benefits that go up every year, safe roads and bridges, and Medicare for hip replacements and nursing home stays, yet doesn't want to pay taxes. Everyone seems to think that someone else should pay the taxes, or perhaps that government can somehow magically do all the things we want it to do without money.
I see people driving $100,000 cars, living in $1,000,000 homes, and having a second home at the beach complaining about how how they simply cannot afford to pay any more taxes. And I myself complain about all the taxes I pay, yet I know there are people the world over who would think they had died and gone to heaven if they lived the life I am able to live.
Generally speaking, the taxes I pay are not my cross to bear. Now if I wrote a check for $1000 and sent it to the US government for debt reduction, that might be. And if I called my Congressman and Senator and asked if they would please raise mine a bit to help out everyone else, that might be.
In recent years, there has been much discussion over whether or not America is a "Christian nation." Deciding requires some sort of working definition of what it means to be Christian and how that applies to entities beyond individuals. For example, if being Christian requires some sense of self denial, of losing one's life "for the sake of the gospel," how is that to be lived out on a national scale?
I look at our current economy, where unemployment remains disturbingly high while American companies are reporting record profits. Would not a Christian impulse for self denial require that those companies put some of those record profits into job creation? Would not bearing the cross mean denying some of that profit to CEOs, executive bonuses, and so forth, and instead using it to hire some folks? Can it be said that capitalism's drive for efficiency, usually understood as making the most money while using the least people possible, is really Christian in any sense of the word?
Now I know that issues of economics, employment, capitalism, and so on are very complex. And I do not pretend to be an expert in any of them. However, Jesus makes it abundantly clear that any who wish to follow him must practice self denial for the sake of his gospel, his proclamation that God's new day is drawing near. And we can't very well claim follow Jesus, praying as he taught us for God's will to be done on earth, while at the same time insisting that God's will somehow doesn't apply to the business world, national defense, or tax policies.
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