Co-Opting "The Cross": How Rome Won the Linguistic War

Co-Opting "The Cross": How Rome Won the Linguistic War

We don’t need to throw the cross away as meaningless religious clutter. We can reclaim its historical meaning. Not as a magical object. Not as proof that suffering is holy. Not as a demand that people quietly endure abuse, poverty, discrimination, or oppression while waiting for a reward in another life. We have had enough of that. We can reclaim the cross as a monument to human courage! Picture a cross for a moment. What do you see? If you’re an atheist, maybe you see a superstition, or a symbol of an institution that has caused lots of harm over the last 2,000 years. If you’re a humanist, you may see religious iconography: jewelry, church steeples, stained glass, and a lot of theological baggage. If you’re a Christian, you may see salvation, forgiveness, sacrifice, or a source of comfort in difficult times. Those reactions make sense. They are also almost certainly nothing like what a cross meant in first-century Roman Palestine! For people living under Roman occupation, a cross was not a decorative symbol. It was not a private spiritual reminder. It was a public instrument of terror. Think less of a necklace and more of a lynching noose. Think of an electric chair, a guillotine, or a brutal execution displayed where everyone passing by is meant to see it. The point was not only to kill a person. The point was to warn everyone else. That changes the way we hear the line in Matthew 10 about taking up a cross. Today, people often use “my cross to bear” to describe a difficult boss, a chronic illness, an annoying relative, or the fact that the Wi-Fi goes out during the season finale. Life is hard; we all have burdens. But that is not the meaning that this image originally carried. The language points toward danger, punishment, and the possibility that standing against entrenched power can cost a person everything. So, let’s dive into that… in this episode of Afterthoughts! CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Good Intentions Aren't Enough

Advocacy isn’t just a sign at a rally or a Facebook post that earns a few likes. Advocacy begins when we notice who needs safety, welcome, or support and we decide to make room. It grows when we stop excusing the small habits that keep us silent or complicit. And it becomes real when we accept that protecting another person’s dignity may cost us comfort, approval, or convenience! Have you ever noticed how easy it is to care about a problem without actually doing anything about it? We can offer sympathy, share a post, say the right words, and still leave the person in front of us carrying the same burden… alone. The hard part is not always recognizing that something is wrong. The hard part is deciding that someone else’s dignity is worth our time, comfort, resources, or social ease. Welcome to Mythologizing the Bible, where we’ll be taking a look at three readings from the Christian Bible through the lens of “sacred myth.” As we reflect on the readings for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we’ll explore advocacy as a way of living: making practical room for vulnerable people, challenging the habits that keep us passive, and accepting the discomfort that comes with standing up for what’s right. In this episode, we’re asking a practical question: Where in your everyday life is someone carrying discomfort or exclusion, and what small amount of friction are you willing to accept to help change it? Because actions speak louder than words, and good intentions don’t protect human dignity until they become action. CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

DEI vs. Merit: The False Choice

If your goal is a true meritocracy, you should actually be defending DEI. The idea that diversity and merit are enemies relies on a massive blind spot: the assumption that our institutions were already perfectly fair before DEI arrived. Hint: They weren’t. One of the most controversial acronyms in America right now is DEI. If you’ve spent any time watching cable news, scrolling social media, or listening to political speeches over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that those three letters can trigger an almost immediate reaction. For some people, DEI represents fairness, opportunity, and social progress. For others, it represents discrimination, lowered standards, and institutional favoritism. It’s become one of those topics where everyone seems to have strong opinions, but relatively few people stop to make sure they’re arguing about the same thing! To be fair, the most common criticism isn’t difficult to understand. Many people have been told that DEI is essentially a zero-sum game. In this view, every opportunity given to a woman, a racial minority, a disabled person, or an LGBTQ employee must have been taken away from a more qualified straight white dude. The story goes something like this: DEI isn’t about fairness at all. It’s about replacing merit with identity and rewarding people for belonging to the “right” demographic category. Now, whether you’ve heard that argument from a politician, a podcaster, a coworker, or an uncle who spends a little too much time watching Fox News, it’s important to recognize that this understanding is what I would call a meme-level explanation. It’s simple. It’s emotionally satisfying (to some people). And it’s completely disconnected from what the philosophy of DEI was originally trying to accomplish. So, let’s dive into that… in this episode of Afterthoughts! CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Don't Hide Your Unique Light!

What if your greatest contribution to the world is simply becoming more fully yourself? This week, we explore the courage to resist conformity, embrace your unique identity, and live authentically in a culture that often rewards fitting in over standing out. Have you ever noticed how much energy we spend trying to be the version of ourselves that other people want us to be? Families, schools, workplaces, religions, political movements, and entire cultures often reward conformity while making authenticity feel risky. The pressure isn’t always obvious, but it’s there… quietly encouraging us to fit in, stay comfortable, and avoid becoming too different from the crowd. Welcome to Mythologizing the Bible, where we’ll be taking a look at three readings from the Christian Bible through the lens of “sacred myth.” As we reflect on the readings for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we’ll explore the courage required to resist conformity, the surprising power a single unique individual can have on the course of history, and the challenge of living openly as your authentic self in a world that often rewards imitation over originality. In this episode, we’re asking an honest question: What part of your authentic self is currently being held back by a fear of what others might think? Because if we’re not careful, we can spend so much time “performing for other people’s expectations” that we lose sight of who we really are, and we miss the unique contribution only we can make to the human story. CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Empathy Trap

If you’ve attended a leadership seminar, read a management book, listened to a business podcast, or spent more than fifteen minutes on LinkedIn over the last decade, you’ve probably heard the same message repeated over and over again: empathy is the ultimate leadership superpower. Great leaders are empathetic. Great managers are empathetic. Great organizations are empathetic. Unfortunately, like so many other corporate buzzwords, empathy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! Now, before anyone starts drafting an angry email, let me be clear: I am not arguing for cruelty, indifference, or treating people like malfunctioning office equipment. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I do think we’ve stumbled into a semantic trap. When most people praise empathy, what they actually mean is kindness, understanding, compassion, patience, or simply paying attention to another human being. Those are all valuable qualities. The problem is that empathy, in its most literal sense, means something much more specific. It means feeling with another person. It means emotionally resonating with their experience, absorbing some portion of their fear, grief, anxiety, or distress into yourself. And that’s where I started getting uncomfortable with the way empathy was being promoted in management circles. Back when I was supervising teams, I used to argue against empathy in the workplace. Not because I was heartless, but because I noticed a pattern. Whenever I began feeling with an employee—when I emotionally absorbed their panic about a deadline, their anxiety about a project, or their frustration with a workplace conflict—my decision-making often got worse. Instead of stepping back and evaluating the situation more clearly, I found myself reacting to the strongest emotional signal in the room. I wasn’t solving problems anymore. I was performing emotional triage. So, let’s dive into that… in this episode of Afterthoughts! CODA Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to CODA Project at www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe [https://www.thecodaproject.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]