It was a cold clear day in March when I made my first visit to the Dube Center in Saskatoon. I was there to visit a 14-year-old girl who had just made her sixth attempt to take her own life. In her own words, “My life is just so messed up.” Sexually abused by her father a year before, her life had spiraled into a dark and frightening place. The most beautiful thing she had seen that week was her own scars. Our conversation that day was an odd mix of dreaming about having kids and a husband who loves her to what she wants at her funeral in the very near future. Her story is no different than thousands of other adolescents.

I work in a small rural town of fewer than 2,000 people, yet our youth group has attracted a number of youth who deal with cutting, depression and substance abuse. Even more carry the deep nagging doubt of their own worth and the pressure to perform well and maintain good friendships. They are lonely, scared, broken and feel themselves to be bags of damaged goods, which sadly parallels what is happening across adolescent culture today. During his extensive research for his book Hurt, Chap Clark found that “When feeling safe enough to admit it, every student I talked to acknowledged that loneliness is a central experience.”¹

I grew up singing there is “Power, power, wonder working power, in the blood of the lamb.” Lately I have been wondering what it means when I read, “By His wounds you are healed.”² As Christians, we have declared the work of Jesus on the cross is central to the message of the good news, the gospel. The apostle Paul believed it’s enough to preach Christ crucified.³ So the cross is central to the good news, and it is the power for those who are being saved; but what does it mean for the teenager trapped in loneliness and depression? What is the good news for the teen who feels so messed up that dying seems to be the only option left?⁴

Some Traditional Views of the Cross
As I sat across from this girl in a small room at the Dube Centre, she constantly expressed her feelings of helplessness and being stuck. With pleading in her voice she asked, “But how!? How do I change?” Is the cross good news to her? How do I explain it to her? I gave her an answer that we both probably felt was inadequate; after an hour, I left. However, the conversation hasn’t left me. I have since ruminated on a number of the traditional options of what might be the best way to express the power and good news of the cross to someone such as her.

In my church tradition and background, I was told the meaning of the cross was to save me from God, who was judging me for doing bad things (sin). If I did not believe in Jesus, the fires of hell awaited me. Let me suggest there is very little here that sounds as if it’s good news to the adolescent who already is drowning in feelings of guilt. For anyone who is caught in destructive addictions such as cutting, it is not very good news that you now are guilty of breaking a divine law and are rotten and worthless in the eyes of God, unless you are covered in the blood of Jesus. What the hurting teen needs is help, not more guilt.⁵

One of the oldest thoughts about what happened at the cross is that by Jesus’ death and resurrection, He defeated the power of evil. Much of Scripture speaks to this. Indeed, it is clear that humanity does not need rescuing from God, but from the power of sin and death.⁶ However, this victory and freedom clearly is not a fully present reality yet. The reality of our lives is still full of darkness. Certainly this is an aspect of the work of Christ on the cross and cannot be discounted as bringing great hope to the struggling adolescent.

The trouble with the above view is that when the reality of darkness and captivity become so overwhelming we can begin to believe the victory on the cross is only a future hope. Does this then mean the Christian life is one that only looks forward to some future reality when we are resurrected? Depending on our lens, 1 Corinthians 15 could be interpreted to mean just that; but then why remain here on earth? Most Christian adolescents have some notion that God wants to do something with them here on Earth. However, for others, their own lack of self-worth and feelings of being trapped in destructive patterns cause them to feel disqualified for that work. It is for good Christians. I was once asked, “Why can Jesus die for us, but we have to wait a long time to die for Him?” There are times when it seems to the struggling adolescent that to use suicide to take his or her own life for Christ (from their perspective) is the best they can do. Paul wrote that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then we are to be pitied more than most. I would argue that the cross without meaning and power in our lived experience now would mean we are also among the saddest people in the world. What is more, Jesus promises abundant (full and meaningful) life in the here and now.⁷ When Jesus spoke to the disciples about leaving them and giving them the coming Holy Spirit, this actually was described as a good thing for them.⁸ It implied that life here is of great worth, that the hope of Christianity is not in what will come after death, but begins here. How does the cross affect not only our future but our present?

Another traditional interpretation was that the cross stood as an example for us. It is a kind of shock therapy, appealing to the human conscience in the same way Gandhi’s willingness to suffer sought to awaken his opponents’ shame and repentance. The tone is expressed in the line from Isaac Watts’s hymn, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”⁹ Erik Erikson has suggested that youth already are searching for something, for someone to die for.¹⁰ One seriously must wonder about telling an already suicidal adolescent that Jesus demands our own lives. These words too quickly can give the religious justification for what they already want. One must pay attention not only to what is being said, but to how those words will be interpreted.

Scripture talks often about the cross removing our shame.¹¹ There is great hope, I believe, for those who are caught feeling shamed and afraid. There is comfort in the reality that Jesus shares our shame, as well as removes our shame. There can be comfort in knowing God not only knows about shame, but has experienced the shame/betrayal/loneliness/nakedness/helplessness. Elaine Heath writes, “Oh, the deep, deep love that binds Jesus to us! Jesus is unwilling to separate Himself from anything we suffer. Jesus chose to experience even the pain of our sexual abuse. We know this because He was sexually abused as His life drained away.”¹² For Heath, there is comfort and power in knowing that:

“Jesus experienced exactly the kind of objectification that is inflicted on women, men and children whose naked bodies are broken for the sexual entertainment of others. Through the cross, Emmanuel, God with us, took into His own body and spirit the humiliation and agony of  our sexual abuse. Jesus carried the shame of every victim’s cross—those of us who survived  and those who didn’t—to His own cross, disarming the ‘rulers and authorities,’ the arbiters of  same, so they no longer have the power to define us (Col. 2:9-15). Atonement for survivors means that through the power of Jesus’ resurrection, we no longer are doomed to live out the broken consequences of the abuse.”¹³

In every way, Jesus is God with us, choosing solidarity with the least and the broken. In Heath’s experience, “The good news of the gospel is that life, not death, has the final word. Death could not contain Emmanuel. Through the power of His resurrection, we too rise to new life.”¹⁴

There is much to love in Heath’s understanding of the cross. I believe it can do much to strengthen our pastor care and counseling to hurting adolescents. Jesus is choosing solidarity with the least and the broken. However, is there more still? It is my conviction that no single theory is enough to express the good news of the cross. As a pastor, I want to articulate hope and good news for all the adolescents I walk with who are trapped in whatever hell in which they dwell. So what follows is not meant to stand alone, but I hope it will give each of us another tool to use when working with those who are hurting.

The Cross as Creation Ex Nihilo
“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed. But it is the power of God for those of us who are being save” (1 Cor. 1:18).

First, the cross is the foremost action of God to save God’s creation. Youth ministry has done a great disservice to adolescents by turning the cross into “doing hard things for Jesus.” Youth ministry in particular has used, “Take up your cross and follow Me” as a method to inspire and challenge adolescents to perform actions that may be difficult. This, however, at best is the secondary meaning of the phrase. For the cross is never about our action. It is about God’s action for us.¹⁵

The foolishness of the cross is this: God dies. Karl Barth said, “God chooses condescension. He chooses humiliation, lowliness and obedience. In this way, He illuminates the darkness, opening up that which is closed. In this way, He brings help where there is no other help.”¹⁶ The cross is God’s action to open a way when no way was possible before. This is the story of Scripture as a whole. In the beginning, God creates ex nihilo. Genesis begins with God taking nothing and giving it form, shape, life! Andrew Root points out that Moses was “called into God’s action ex nihilo—out of his nothingness as a stuttering, elderly fugitive asked to lead a people bound by the ex nihilo of slavery when the people were trapped.”¹⁷ When the people reached the sea and were trapped by Pharaoh’s armies behind them, Moses’ words to the people were: “Don’t be afraid. Stand your ground, and watch the Lord rescue you today…The Lord will fight for you. Just keep still.”¹⁸ Out of this place of desperation and impending capture, God made a way for the people.

This is the pattern we see throughout the rest of the story of Israel whether it was God bringing freedom through the captured, blind and weak Samson; the pittance of Gideon’s army; the single rock of a shepherd boy named David; or the choosing of barren women to bring nations and leaders to existence. In the New Testament, God did not choose wise priests and legal experts to spread the good news to the world, but blue-collar doubters, cheaters, rebels and nobodies. For the apostle Paul, one of his greatest qualifications for ministry was his own brokenness. God continually used the nothingness of people and situations to bring about victory and freedom.

The cross fits the pattern we already have seen. Paul wrote:

“In God’s wisdom, He determined the world wouldn’t come to know Him through its wisdom. Instead, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of  preaching. Jews ask for signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, which is a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who  are called—Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom…But God chose what the world considers foolish to shame the wise. God choose what the world  considers weak to shame the strong. God chose what the world considers low-class and low-life—what is considered to be nothing—to reduce what is considered to be something to nothing.”¹⁹

The cross is about nothingness, for death is the ultimate passing into nothingness. Death is the ultimate un-creation of God’s good creation. It is the returning to the dust from which we came. The author of Ecclesiastics wrote, “This is the sad thing about all that happens under the sun: the same fate awaits everyone.”²⁰ Into this nothingness, God’s own-self approaches us, “accepts solidarity with the creature, with man, in order to reconcile them and the world to Himself, in order to convert man and the world to Himself.”²¹ God entered into the nothingness that all people experience and from that nothingness brings life! The cross is not the end of the story. When it seems as though we are stranded in the hours in which the Earth was dark²² and our own words echo those of Jesus’: “Eli, Eli, lamah sabachthani,” which means, “My God, My God, why have You left Me?”²³ we are not left in despair, but see that the darkness is the birth place of hope.

Through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, God bursts into the world and declares that what appears to be is not the end, but only the beginning of a new reality. Richard B. Hays writes, “The cross is the key to understanding reality in God’s new eschatological age.”²⁴ This new age is not one that finds our hope in a future. Rather, “To proclaim the resurrection of Christ is to declare God’s triumph over death and therefore the meaningfulness of embodied life. That is why, according to Paul, our future hope must be for a transformed body in the resurrection, not an escape from the embodied state.”²⁵

For those versed in the story of Scripture and God’s continuous choice to create out of nothing, the cross is seen to be with the consistent patter by which God’s power and wisdom have been displayed.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18—2:5 the primary meaning of the cross for Paul is that it, “marks God’s intervention to destroy the old age and bring the new into beginning.”²⁶ The cross is God’s action for us. The cross is God creating ex nihilo. The cross and resurrection remind us God always has and will continue to make new life where there was only death. The cross stands as a sign that God can be found in the moments of powerlessness, brokenness, despair and death. The cross is God’s act that declares, “If anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!”²⁷ Or as Andrew Root puts it, “for those with eyes to see, the cross is the very power to bring forth something new, to turn what is not into what is. It is the power to turn death into life.”²⁸

The cross is God’s action to create new life out of nothing. The cross is God’s reminder that when we are on death’s door, when darkness covers the Earth and we are about to be swallowed into the void of nothingness, light is right around the corner. Nothingness is the first step toward the groundbreaking act of new life. Nothingness is the soil through which hope can grow.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us that when He is lifted up He will draw everyone to Himself.²⁹ The cross is the birth place of hope, and if we desire to find Jesus, this is the place where He will be. Richard Hays writes:

“The word crucified (1 Cor. 2:2) is a perfect passive participle in the Greek (the same as  in 1 Cor. 1:23); the perfect tense describes actions completed in the past whose effects continue into the present. Thus, when Paul summarizes the content of the gospel as  ‘Christ Crucified,’ he is identifying Jesus Christ as the one whose identity remains stamped by the cross. The cross has not been canceled by the resurrection; rather, to  know even the risen Jesus is to know Him precisely as the crucified one.”³⁰

This theme is clearly carried out in the rest of the New Testament. Jesus showed His scars to the disciples in John 20:19-20, 27. In Galatians 3:1 we read, “Jesus Christ was put on display as crucified before your eyes!” In the final book of Scripture, the heavenly hosts proclaim Jesus as the slaughtered Lamb.³¹ It is possible that we as pastors, teachers and parents have done a great disservice to our adolescents by speaking so exaltedly of Jesus. We tell of Jesus’ ascension to the throne and how Jesus sits at the right hand of God. For many, our image of Jesus is all white with a bright glow. We may rightly ask what does this Jesus know of my present darkness? The truth of the Scripture is that Jesus rises from the dead as the first fruit of our hope³² but does so with all the marks and scars of the cross. Too often, Christians have loved a Jesus of glory, while ignoring the Jesus of the cross. However, there is no glorious Jesus, except the One found at the cross! Jesus has not risen from the grave and fled to the comfort of heaven, but rather has risen from the dead and stands at the cross bringing hope to all who are still in the darkness.

So the task for all who live with and care for the hurting adolescents is to teach them where to look. The apostle John told us exactly where that is. In John 18:37, he wrote, “They will look at Him whom they have pierced.” For years because of what I was taught about the cross, I believed the they in this passage referred to me, that I was the one guilty of crucifying Jesus. However, they does not necessarily mean me. We justifiably can read it to mean the One the Romans pierced. While there may be a place to help youth understand the role they have in the death of Jesus, this may not be the place to make that connection. Rather, the goal is not to make the adolescent feel as if he or she is responsible, but to direct his or her attention to see God’s action on his or her behalf. This should not induce more guilt, but bring hope that God has acted and is acting for them through the horror of the cross. I appreciate Andrew Root’s words:

“It is to seek for God within the struggle of possibility and nothingness, to search for God  at the ontological level…It is to acknowledge with them that they are stuck, and to seek God with them from that very place. God is found at the place of struggle between possibility and nothingness because the God that Paul proclaims to the Corinthians is a  God who bears the cross. In Godself, God struggles for the new possibility through nothingness, and through nothingness the new reality is born. This is what Jesus meant when He said that whoever wants to be His disciples must take up their cross and follow Him (Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23). He doesn’t mean we must do difficult things…Rather, what Jesus meant is that we must seek Him where He can be found, on  the cross, at the site of our own crosses, those places where we struggle between  possibility and nothingness. Paul believed God acts from the cross—from death, weakness and suffering.”³³

Our task is to help our youth look to Jesus at the cross. The roll of the pastor and parent is not to counsel our youth into thinking of a better future. It is not to tell them to pull themselves out of the slump. Rather, it is to have them look closely to see God. The cross bears witness to a God who in the midst of nothingness brings a new reality. This is our hope that even in the places of our own desperation, God is there working to bring a new reality to our lives. God enters the nothingness and so creates ex nihilo, as God always has.

What will I say the next time I am sitting across from someone who is lost in the darkness? I will say, “You are not alone! I know Jesus has been in the darkest nothingness imaginable, but came through it and is now walking through this shadow with you. Don’t give up hope, for you are in the birthplace of hope. Don’t give up hope, because I believe in a God who always has worked best when there is nothing with which to work. Open your eyes. Look at the One who was pierced. Keep watch, because God is moving. Resurrection, new life, a new reality is coming!

¹Chap Clark, Hurt 2.0, 35. In a larger insight into the state of youth he writes “Put succinctly, adolescent partying is rarely an end unto itself; far more often it is a means by which our abandoned young people attempt to satisfy their deep need for community, especially since the social lubricant of alcohol and marijuana, coupled with the prospect of sexual opportunity, provides at least a temporary salve to their loneliness” (Hurt 2.0, 161). This is not just the situation of adolescents. Andrew Root writes that, “it may be that this weird behavior, the great highs and devastating lows so characteristic of adolescence, is a truthful reflection of the ontological states of all of us. For every one of us, hope and despair are so close, life and death so near…We are all in a struggle between possibility and nothingness, a struggle that those in adolescence often experience with heightened awareness.” Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012) 51-52. So while this paper talks about the struggling adolescent, it is my belief this message of the cross speaks to all people regardless of their age, because we all struggle with the same challenges. It is just that as we get older, we learn to better mask and cope with our feelings, at least until everything falls apart.
² 1 Peter 2:24.
³ 1 Cor. 2:2.
⁴ 1 Cor. 1:18.
⁵ I would suggest further that not only does this model not sound like good news to an adolescent, it actually doesn’t sound much like the good news that is proclaimed in Scripture as a whole. Much has been written on the atonement in recent years, and I recommend Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press) by Joel B. Green and Mark Baker as a great starting point for further study on this particular issue.

I also want to make clear I do believe the cross removes our guilt and that this is an aspect of atonement. This is part of the story of the cross. It is not however, the primary or only meaning of the cross. My problem is not with the language of guilt and sin, and these always must be included in our theology of the cross. My great concern is rather the picture portrayed in most popular articulations of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
⁶ Col. 1:13; 2:14-15; Rom. 8.
⁷ John 10:10.
⁸ John 14:15-31.
⁹ S. Mark Heim, Why does Jesus’ Death Matter? http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2138 (Accessed Feb. 28, 2013).
¹⁰ Erik H. Erikson, Identity, Youth and Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968), 233.
¹¹ Indeed the cross as removal of shame is a far more frequent theme than the removal of guilt in the Second Testament.
¹² Elaine Heath, We Were the Least of these: Reading the Bible with Survivors of Sexual Abuse (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011), 122.
¹³ Heath, 125-26.
¹⁴ Heath, 133.
¹⁵ See more in Andrew Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry, 62-64. I am greatly indebted to the work of Root on this topic. What follows I hope is a further expanding on the ideas which he sets out in his book.
¹⁶ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1, 199.
¹⁷ Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry, 32.
¹⁸ Ex. 14:13-14.
¹⁹ 1 Cor. 1:21-24, 27-28.
²⁰ Ecc. 9:3.
²¹ Barth, 199.
²² Matt. 27:45.
²³ Matt. 27:46.
²⁴ Richard B. Hays, Interpretation a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: 1 Corinthians (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), 31.
²⁵ Ibid, 253.
²⁶ Ibid, 35.
²⁷ 2 Cor. 5:17.
²⁸ Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry, 36-37.
²⁹ John 12:32.
³⁰ Hays, 35.
³¹ Rev. 5:12 Also again known as the Lamb who was slain in Rev. 13:8.
³² 1 Cor. 15:23.
³³ Root, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry, 55.