Jesus "The Raptor" Christ

Every religion, or any system of beliefs for that matter, has it's symbols and icons. The star of David for Judaism, the Lotus for Buddhists, the Omkar for Hinduism. Whatever you identify with, there's some kind of symbol used to represent qualities and values that go along with said beliefs. For myself, I'm a reformed Christian. I say reformed because I still believe in a lot of the basic values taught-- be lawful and kind, respect your peers and elders, etcetera --but I don't agree with a lot of other teaches and the general way things were run. I guess I predisposed myself to this at a young age, when it became apparent that I asked too many questions. 

"Why did they kill Jesus? Why do we burn palm branches? What does 'adultery' mean?"

Too many questions, and not enough answers. Most of my questions revolved around why. I wanted to know why everything happened, why things were the way they are. One of my biggest questions was why use the cross as the Christian symbol? Of course, this was met with the typical Catholic School Teacher response: "Because he died for our sins. Now write your ten commandments." 

I settled for that as an answer, but knew that there had to be more. It didn't make sense to just pick the cross as the overall symbol out of all the other things in the bible, like the fish and wine or the ark. Why wasn't our calling card a picture of Jesus himself? 

I didn't find out the reason until very recently; not even two hours ago in fact. The Cross was first seen as a symbol of power by Constantine I, who is sometimes called the 13th Apostle. It's told that he saw the image of the cross in the sky with the words "In Hoc Signo Vinces," which translates to "In this sign conquer." He posted the symbol on all the shields of his men and sure enough, he won the battle of Milvian Bridge right outside of Rome. This, naturally, led to other victories and his eventual Emperorship. 

I was astonished to find out that the big icon of our religion wasn't carefully thought out, but really just a cloud in the sky that someone interpreted as a cross. This brought up a whole other series of questions, of course. What would have happened if he fell asleep and never seen the cloud? What would happen if he had seen a dinosaur instead? Would we be worshiping Jesus "The Raptor" Christ today? Would our rosary beads be topped off at the bottom with a tiny T-rex? Of course, those questions would never be answered back in grammar school. They would be gasped at, seen as sacrilege. I would be cast out like the lepers. Ultimately though, that's the reason. Some guy saw it in the sky, used it as a good luck charm, and by chance (or holy luck) won a battle. When you hear little side stories like this, away from the big picture of the death and creation, it makes you wonder how much of religion is sent from the higher being and how much is just clouds in the sky.