The cross—Violence, Compassion and the Resurrection

My interest in exploring the cross discourse arose when I read the question, “Can a feminist theologian of the cross faithfully communicate the intimate presence of Christ in the lives of Korean—particularly shattered women today?”Then I remembered one episode that had happened not so long ago. I volunteered to answer 24-hour hot line calls from Korean women who suffer from domestic violence. One night, I got a call. The woman seemed insecure. Later when I told that I was a pastor, she revealed a lot of information and sought religious values from her suffering. The woman told me that her husband had beaten her from the beginning of their marriage and he was a pastor. She told me that she felt obligated to remain with him since she was a Christian and a pastor’s wife. I asked her what being a Christian meant to her. She answered that a Christian meant bearing one’s cross as Jesus did. It seemed that she did not want to take any particular action to fix her situation. Rather, she seemed to want to hear confirmative words from me that would have sustained this abusive relationship such as, “Yes, you need to bear your cross.” What is the meaning of the cross for many Christian women today? In order to answer this question, I need to critically look at the classical atonement theories and how these theories have influenced the understanding of Christian women in terms of their suffering. I have to ask how feminists can accept an atonement doctrine with relation to its affect to the Christian women and how atonement can be revised or retrieved to new understandings.