A Thousand Qualifications

In his book, Who Is Jesus? Leander Keck quotes an E. Borowitz as writing this painful-to-hear-because-it-sounds-true observation,

The notion of Christian cross-bearing seems to us to die the death of 'a thousand qualifications.' By the time Christian teachers are done explaining what it means to take up ones' cross and suffer with Christ one seems only to be authorized to consider it virtue to endure one's bourgeois troubles.