Tag Archives: Sacred Symbols of Subversion

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 6: The Seashell

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Read Romans 6:3–4

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” (Acts 22:16 NLT)

Symbols carry memory and meaning far beyond words. The Church has always leaned on them—sometimes hidden in plain sight, sometimes dismissed or distorted. Yet the most powerful symbols are those that subvert the world’s expectations and draw us back to the radical heart of the Gospel. In this series, we’ll look closer at the sacred signs that shock, unsettle, and ultimately call us deeper into Christ.

Image: AI-generated using DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Seashell” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 6: The Seashell. Today seashells are everywhere. They decorate bathroom walls and beach houses. They hang from necklaces and sit in souvenir shops as reminders of vacation days and ocean breezes. Harmless, pretty, sentimental. But in the early church, the seashell was no trinket. It became a vessel of death and life — a sign not of leisure, but of dangerous allegiance.

Why? Because baptism itself was subversive. To step into the water was not just to make a personal choice, but to renounce everything Rome held sacred. Baptism meant dying to this world and rising in loyalty to Jesus — the one Rome had executed as a traitor. It was not merely symbolic. Families could disown you. Inheritance could be stripped away. Neighbors would brand you disloyal, suspicious, immoral. To be baptized was to be cut off from your household gods, from your family name and protection, and to join a subterranean movement with a terrible reputation.

To grasp the shock, imagine the reversal today: a Christian family’s child announcing they were now an atheist—or even a Satanist. The backlash wouldn’t just be private disappointment. It would ripple socially, touching reputation, relationships, even employment in some communities. That’s the kind of upheaval baptism triggered in the first century.

That reputation was fueled by rumors: that Christians held secret “love feasts” filled with sexual immorality, that they practiced cannibalism when they spoke of eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood, that they upended the household order by welcoming women and slaves as equals. To go under the water was to step into that reputation. You were no longer respectable. You were part of a sect Rome saw as both treasonous and depraved. Baptism was treason, and the seashell — often used to scoop and pour the water — became bound up in that act of rebellion.

The shell carried other echoes too. In Greco-Roman culture, shells were tied to fertility and birth. Venus was often pictured rising from the sea on a scallop shell. Christians didn’t directly borrow that imagery, but they reframed it. The shell whispered of a different kind of fertility — one that required spiritual death to this world and rebirth into a new humanity brought forth from the waters of baptism.

As time went on, the seashell became a pilgrim’s badge. Those who traveled to holy sites, like Santiago de Compostela, carried a scallop shell as a mark of their journey. It was practical — used to drink from streams — but also deeply symbolic. To wear the shell was to announce: I am not traveling for leisure, but for transformation. My life is a road of discipleship.

Put together, baptism and pilgrimage gave the seashell a dangerous beauty. It was never just decoration. It was a summons. The seashell told the world that you had died to Rome and risen into Christ. That your loyalty no longer lay with emperor, household, or inheritance, but with the crucified and risen Lord. That you were willing to walk the long road of discipleship, even when it meant being despised.

Today, we’ve tamed the shell into a souvenir. Pretty, harmless, something to match the curtains. But the shell still asks its ancient question: what does your baptism mean? Do you remember that in those waters you died — not just to sin, but to empire, to family idols, to all lesser loyalties?

And as the band Demon Hunter reminds us, the world is crowded with lesser gods — idols demanding our loyalty, false saviors promising security, belonging, or power. Baptism drowns them. It puts them to a watery grave. To rise from the water is to declare that none of those idols rule us anymore.

Because Rome still has its names today. Sometimes it waves the flag and baptizes nationalism as faith. Sometimes it hides in markets that tell us our worth is what we consume. Sometimes it creeps into families that demand loyalty to prejudice instead of love. Sometimes it sits in churches that bless power instead of bearing the cross.

To carry the shell is to reject those false lords. It is to live as if your life is a pilgrimage — marked not by comfort, but by costly transformation. To say with your whole being: my baptism was treason to the powers of this world, and my life is now hidden with Christ in God.

The seashell is not a trinket. It is Christ’s rebellious mission in your hand.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The seashell is not a souvenir. It is a summons.

PRAYER
God of new birth and long journeys, remind us of our baptism. Remind us that we have died to old loyalties and risen to follow Christ. Give us courage to walk the pilgrim’s road, to bear reproach, to seek justice, to love mercy, and to trust that you go before us. May every step of our lives echo the vows we made in the water. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Symbols of Subversion, Part 2: Cross

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By Rev. Todd R. Lattig

Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23 NLT)

Symbols carry memory and meaning far beyond words. The Church has always leaned on them—sometimes hidden in plain sight, sometimes dismissed or distorted. Yet the most powerful symbols are those that subvert the world’s expectations and draw us back to the radical heart of the Gospel. In this series, we’ll look closer at the sacred signs that shock, unsettle, and ultimately call us deeper into Christ.

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E (OpenAI) and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Cross” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 2: The Cross. The cross is no trinket. It is no harmless decoration. It was a grotesque, horrific instrument of capital punishment, designed not only to kill but to humiliate and terrorize. Crucifixion was slow, brutal, and deliberately public.

The condemned were tied or nailed naked to wooden beams, stripped of dignity as well as clothing, and left to suffocate under the weight of their own body. Each breath became harder than the last. The body’s weight pressed down on the lungs, so the victim had to push up on torn feet just to inhale, each movement scraping flesh against rough wood. Hours stretched into days.

Friends and family, if they dared to come near, could only watch in grief as their loved one slowly collapsed under the strain. Meanwhile, the scent of blood carried far, drawing insects to swarm the wounds and scavenger birds to circle overhead. Dogs or jackals sometimes prowled beneath the crosses, waiting for what Rome would not bother to bury. Crucifixion was not only execution; it was degradation, meant to erase humanity itself.

To put it in modern terms, it would be as if a faith today chose the electric chair, the noose, the firing squad, or the lethal injection needle as its central symbol. That’s how scandalous the cross was in the first century. And yet, Christians did exactly that. They lifted high what the world despised. They proclaimed Christ crucified. Paul admitted it sounded like foolishness—who builds a movement around a state execution?—but to those who believed, it became the very power of God.

Over time, though, the scandal faded. The cross was polished, gilded, carved into pulpits, worn as jewelry. It became safe, sentimental, even weaponized. Some hold it up as a symbol of cultural dominance or political power—ironically, the very thing it meant to the Romans who first used it. But here is the subversion: Christians inverted the meaning. Rome used the cross to proclaim its absolute power; the Church proclaimed the cross as the place where God’s love broke the empire’s grip. What began as a tool of terror became, in Christ, the sign of salvation.

This is one reason why I do not, under any circumstance, support the death penalty. Yes, there are passages of Scripture that seem to condone it. But I believe the Gospel itself must be our standard, and Jesus’ teachings must be our guide. Jesus was himself a victim of capital punishment, executed as an enemy of the state. To hold up the cross while endorsing modern executions feels, to me, like a contradiction too deep to reconcile. That is my position, one I live and teach true to. I do not judge those who struggle with it, because I have too. And I certainly do not condemn those who disagree. But I cannot escape the reality that the cross calls us to something different.

To take up the cross daily is not to wear a charm, but to embrace a costly way of life. It is to stand with the condemned, not condemn them further. It is to resist the cruelty of empire, not baptize it as righteous. It is to embody love, not vengeance—even in the face of death.

The cross still subverts every attempt to wrap violence in the language of virtue, every effort to sanctify exclusion, every excuse we make for injustice. It will not let us demonize LGBTQ people, scapegoat people of color, or silence women who cry out after being assaulted. It will not let us trample the marginalized while pretending to defend the faith.

Christ will not be hijacked by nationalists, culture warriors, or power-hungry voices who try to turn the Gospel into a weapon. Instead, the cross dares us to see Christ—broken, bleeding, condemned—and still confess: this is the One who saves us.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The cross is not a decoration but a defiant witness: Christ crucified, and Christ alone as Lord.

PRAYER
God of mercy, forgive us when we make the cross safe or sentimental. Teach us again to see it for what it is: the place where empire’s violence met your radical love. Help me to follow Christ with courage, standing with the suffering, rejecting vengeance, and living the way of costly grace. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).