“He was executed by Roman authorities about two thousand years ago. Yet today, from countless paintings, statues, and buildings, from literature and history, from personality and institution, from profanity, popular song, and entertainment media, from confession and controversy, from legend and ritual – Jesus stands quietly at the center of the contemporary world, as he himself predicted. He so graced the ugly instrument upon which he died that the cross has become the most widely exhibited and recognized symbol on earth.”
— Dallas Willard from The Divine Conspiracy