I don't need to tell you that we belong to a portion of the Christian family called the "Protestant Church." I also don't need to tell you that there's a whole lot of history behind all this, and frankly, I am going to choose to share that on another day. One part of our Protestant identity is something that we see every time we come into our church. It's something we look at every day, and don't think about too much. Take a look up on our altar. What do you see? That's right. It's the cross.

On our altar is a representation of the instrument of execution that was used by the Romans to kill Jesus. We've lost much of the power of this symbol over time. There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that we no longer execute people on crosses these days. A more cont…