But over against this downplaying or mocking [of the cross by those who wanted to think of themselves as Christians] we also see, from the earliest documents of the New Testament right on through the first five or six centuries of church history, the resolute affirmation of the cross not as an embarrassing episode best left on the margins, but as the mysterious key to the meaning of life, God, the world, and human destiny. One of the great Christian writers of the mid-second century, Justin Martyr, wrote glowingly about the way in which the cross is the key to everything. It is the central feature of the world, he said: if you want to sail a ship, the mast will be in the shape of a cross; if you want to dig a ditch, your spade will need a cross-shaped handle. This gives us a fair indication of the way in which even those who were trying to explain the Christian faith attractively to outsiders didn’t shy away from the cross, but rather celebrated it.
–N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began (New York: HarperOne, 2016), p.21 (emphasis mine)