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Recently, the attention of the world was riveted to a deserted beach in northern Libya, where a group of 21 Coptic Christians were brutally beheaded by masked operatives of the ISIS movement.
In the wake of the executions, ISIS released a gruesome video entitled A Message in Blood to the Nation of the Cross. I suppose that for the ISIS murderers, the reference to “the Nation of the Cross” had little sense beyond a generic designation for Christianity.
Sadly for most Christians, too, the cross has become little more than a harmless symbol. I would like to take the awful event on that Libyan beach, as well as the ISIS message, as an occasion to reflect on the still startling distinctiveness of the cross.