At Richard Dawkin’s (The Pope of Atheism) and many other atheist sites you can find this quote from the long-dead comedian Lenny Bruce:

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago,
Catholic school children would be wearing
little electric chairs around their necks
instead of crosses.”

Maybe you, too, believe that there is no difference between the Cross that Jesus was crucified on and the electric chair. If so, then you’d be wrong. Dead wrong.

Here’s an excerpt from an excellent article that explains the difference:

The electric chair was created by the Edison Company in the late 1800s as a means to execute a prisoner faster and more humanely. Typically, the process—leading up to, during, and following our executions today—is carefully scripted and implemented to ensure the criminal dies with some dignity and as little suffering as possible.

The cross was designed and used to execute criminals in the slowest, most painful, agonizing, and humiliating way possible, reserved only for slave, pirates, and traitors. Being such an unspeakably horrifying way to die, Roman citizens were not subjected to it. Anyone hanging on a cross was of no value whatsoever. They were a curse. When Paul wrote to the Galatians about the nature of Christ’s death, they knew exactly what he was talking about because they knew what the cross signified. Click here to read the rest of the article.