Why do Christians focus so much on the crucifixion of Jesus?
Throughout history many people have suffered similar and far worse deaths. There is nothing special about the way Jesus died. What I feel as a former believer that the resurrection is what should be the focus.
Rather than people wearing a torture device around their necks, wouldn’t an image of Christ with his arms outstretched rising from his grave and joining the ‘Father’ in heaven be more appropriate?
Because that is the moment of the sacrifice. When he gives himself in place of all future sacrifices, for the salvation of all.
Like Chimera said, the central idea of Christianity is that God sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind. The resurrection was actually trivial in comparison.
Don’t look at it in human terms. For a human being, dying is normal and coming back to life is extraordinary. But for God, the opposite is true. God’s immortal so living is normal for him. What was extraordinary was God choosing to die.
I think the focus in Christianity is more on the resurrection that the crucifixion. The big holiday is Easter, not Good Friday.
I never understood how God was choosing to die when God could just wake up whenever he wanted. It’s really not like the human experience of death in the least.
As noted, this is the focal moment of Christianity – Christ’s giving himself as sacrifice for the sins of humanity. You can argue about whether you believe it or not, or think it appropriate, but this is the theological point of most Christian religion.
One of the things that really struck me about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when I lived in Salt Lake City was the paucity of depictions of the Crucifiction. Mormon chapels and temples do not have crosses on their spires, or anywhere within. The only crucifiction I know of in mormon art is the one in the Visitor’s Center in Temple Square. Mormons prefer the Risen Jesus to the Crucified Christ.
i suppose it gives ammunition to those who classify the Mormons as “non-Christian”, but I’d point out that the very non-Christian Scientologists use a cross* as their main religious symbol, so it all evens out.
*not a cucifix, which has the figure of Christ on it. The Scientology cross doesn’t obviously derive from the Christian symbol, and it’s been argued that their cross, with its four extra “points” at multiples of 45 degrees, is derived from a symbol on Aleister Crowley’s Tarot.
Because it is the coolest martyrdom ever. Jesus had the shit kicked out of him, got whipped, lost all of his clothes, and then got the shit kicked out of him again and nailed to a cross. If Haile Selassie died in the same way, we would all be Rastafarian.
SFC Schwartz
As mentioned, the main holiday of Christianity is the Feast of the Resurrection - not “trivial” except in the sense that to God any action would be trivial. But many Christian churches use iconography of the empty grave, the image of the risen Christ, the empty cross, as symbols of the eventual positive ending…
…HOWEVER in the mainstream theology, there is no resurrection without the previous death: it’s a package deal.
On a tomb monument in New Orleans I saw an inscription once: many other tombs had an inscription of a cross with a crown; but this one had engraved on it “No (cross), no (crown)”. The cross or the crucifix are reminders that there’s a price paid. And of the two ends of the process of death-and-resurrection, the one that humans are familiar with and can most easily relate to is the one with the pain and death. So it’s the more accessible symbol.
(BTW one of the things that is supposed to be remarkable about Christ being executed by crucifixion is that it was not just a painful method but even more a very vulgar and demeaning one.)
It is a stage of their belief, the focus on the death usually indicates that they need to die to self in their walk, the focus on the resurrection sometimes means they have dies to self and have started the rebirth of a new life, Lord Jesus in them.
It’s just a indication of where a believer is.
Nothing special? It was a long, tortuous, and incredibly painful way to die. In fact, the word “excruciating” comes from the Latin word cruciare, which means “to crucify.”
It is no accident that the Romans used this technique as a means of torture and execution.
Are there people who have suffered more painful deaths? Doubtlessly so, but this doesn’t mean that being hung on a cross is a walk in the park.
How would you know? Supposedly the three Persons of God are quite distinct[sup]*[/sup], and the Son being physically embodied as a man would be quite capable of dying indeed and unable to wake himself. And how do you know what it is to die - especially for someone who should never have been able to die, and who is subsequently able to remember the event in flawless detail?
*And simultaneously not… that’s as old as the Athanasian Creed or Patrick’s parable of the shamrock.
Because if you know you’re God, you know you’re God, and I know I’m not God. That makes my experiences distinct from a being that knows he’s God, and knows he’s gonna be dead for a weekend.
I think the idea is that God would experience what humans do, exactly as humans do, and have more compassion as a result.
Besides, the idea of a god dying for “the sins of the world” is a magic and mystical concept – transference. You can’t explain how it works, you must believe.
Didn’t mean to imply crucifixion was not a horrible way to die. From when I hear Christians talking about it, they often make it sound that his death was unique and different from others who suffered the same fate. They may not intend to have it sound that way, but that is how I hear it.
It was, because God Became Man sacrificed himself for us.
Sounds like you’re expecting that Christ should have died a very unique and particularly nasty death that no one else, before or since, has experienced. Not sure why you would expect that.
Chimera is right. Christians do not teach that the manner of Christ’s death was unique.
Heck, they are quick to point out that crucifixion was a common practice in the Roman empire. The gospels themselves even emphasize that there were two thieves who were crucified alongside him! Nothing in Christian theology declares that the manner of his death was unique in every way.
Oh, come off it! A cool martyrdom is one where the body count is Romans 10, Christians 1!
IIRC, the crucifix didn’t become a popular symbol for Christians until after the first hundred or so years. Initially, the symbol that identified Christians (when they were that dangerous cult of “atheist” lunatics) was the fish. More focus was placed on Jesus’s life and his acts than on his death and resurrection.
The focus later moved when the Church became a force and established an orthodoxy.
If only the Romans had practiced impalement instead of crucifixion! I dare Christians to wear an effigy of that! 
That reminds me of the joke asking what Christians would do if Jesus had been given the electric chair. Instead of making the sign of the cross, maybe they’d just stick out their tongues, roll up their eyes and kind of vibrate…
