Taking Offense at the Cross

A seeming “tempest in a teapot” has brewed a storm of controversy at Penn State University. A majority of students approved the annual “White Out” t-shirt to be worn creating a sea of white at the annual “White Out” game. However, some highly offended objectors noted that the single vertical blue stripe with “Penn State” in bold letters printed horizontally across it was too much like a cross. Six students officially objected the shirt’s design, but the Nike-produced shirts are a sell-out with 30,000 shirts sold.

The Philadelphia Anti-Defamation League even lodged an official complaint citing the design’s Christian connotation. Designers claim any similarities to the Cross are purely accidental.

What should be noted at this great institution of higher learning is not the offense of the cross but the incorrect grammar on the shirt’s back inscription. In large letters across another vertical blue line is printed: “Don’t be intimidated… It’s just me and 110,000 of my friends.”

While that is generally accepted expression, it is technically incorrect English. “Me” is cast in the nominative case, not objective, and should properly be “I.” But it is better, I suppose some would say, to see unintended crosses everywhere than note improper English 30,000 times at the State University football game.

Actually, the oversight is a compliment to the cross. When people object to the visibility of the cross, it underscores 1 Corinthians 1:18. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing….”

Crosses in the ancient world were death instruments—necrotic emblems of rebellion against Roman authority. In Christian history, the cross is the place of Christ’s ignominious death and the shedding of His blood for our sins. Crosses can adorn chapel spires and even be icons worn around one’s neck, but imagined on college t-shirts is just too much for the nit-picking, politically correct crowd.

If the offense is because of the cross’s true meaning, a kind of perverse appreciation is accepted. Christ endured it and so should all believers. “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

The strict demarcation between competing philosophies and colliding world views is spelled out in 1 Cor. 1:18 and 19. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’”

The only way we rid ourselves of death, hell and even improper philosophy and lifestyle is through the cross as Paul says in Galatians 6:14. “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Who would have thought that a secular design on a state university t-shirt would give me the opportunity to share the real meaning of the cross? Perhaps it is a fulfillment of
Psalm 76:10. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise You…”

In the hymn “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” Elizabeth Clephane caught the meaning of the cross:

I take, O cross, they shadow for my abiding place;
I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face;
Content to let the world go by, to know no gain nor loss;
My sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.

Dave Virkler