Crosses are disappearing from our churches. Indeed, the most successful, fastest growing churches in America often do not have that symbol anywhere in sight. Christianity is becoming something different than how it was modeled by Christ. Christians are now being identified not by the cross that they took up but by their rating on "the good guy meter".

Are you a productive member of society?

Do you vote in all the elections?

Keep your lawn mowed and your car clean?

Then you must be a "good Christian".

I will never forget the conversation I had with a local social activist back in Iowa. This was a man who had championed so many unpopular causes, he was hated by just about every authority in the city. His only advocates were the disabled, the poor, the racial minorities, gay men and women.

He was, in almost every respect, not a "good Christian man".

He wept as he told me of his loneliness, of his frustration against the powers that be, of his sense of failure and defeat.

He was, in almost every respect, a Christian.

What identifies him as such is not a creed that he utters or an emotional experience he has shared, although both may be a part of his life. It is, rather, the cross that he shoulders. The cross that he picked up when he denied himself and began to care for others.