Fleeing the Crucified Christ
"Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way." (Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God 40th Anniversary Edition, 47)
One of Moltmann's major contributions in The Crucified God was his willingness to allow the meaning of the cross to define the whole of Christian theology. This means that the very fundamental ideas of who God is and how God relates to the world are fundamentally flawed unless viewed through the lens of crucifixion.
In the cross, we encounter a world of contradiction and paradox that rattle even the rules the Church has constructed to safeguard theism. Instead of discovering a cosmological God of power, we discover a dying Christ. Moltmann then continues that this revelation liberates humanity from self-justification, self-assertion, and most importantly, self-deification.
The cross exposes the folly of Christians who obsess over political and religious power. To do so is to fundamentally ignore the very icon and foundation of their faith. If God can be identified through God's own crucifixion, how can any follower of Christ dare chase power? We are indeed tempted to flee the crucified Christ, and yet we must hold him in focus before as the only means of understanding not only theology but also the Church's mission in the world.
