I feel though like wearing a token cross in honor of being told to take up a more literal cross seems like paying lip service to a very serious call to action with very low actual stakes.

Like being told to stand up to the guns of an army to stand firm for justice and then wearing little rifle pendants instead claiming that means you look to live your life consistent with that principle even as you stay well away from actual fighting.

You may personally of course live your life consistent with the values and that is just a symbol, but it's broadly a symbol that has been cheapened by casual overuse, and to some extent corrupted by folks using it as a symbol of their alignment to God and implied divine authority granted by that association.

Potential problem:

The Greek word that is, in basically every English translation rendered as 'cross'... does not actually specifically mean 'cross'.

The word is stauros.

What it literally means is roughly a wooden 'pole' or 'stake', and was colloqiually used at the time to just refer to any configuration of wooden poles upon which one would be crucified... which, while yes, were often in the shape of a cross, they also often weren't... maybe a T, or an X, or just a straight pole.

It was also used... I don't think in the New Testament, but other Greek writings from the same time... to just mean large pieces of worked wood used in construction, even just 'a tree', though those uses rely a bit more on the surrounding context.

The English 'crucify' is built on the assumption that it was an actual cross. In greek, the verb for 'crucify' is stauroo, unconjugated; 'to fasten to a stake or pole.'

... Its kind of like how 'Matthew' incorrectly translates the Hebrew word almah into the Greek word for 'virgin', when he quotes Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:22-23, to say that Jesus' birth fulfils prophecy.

Almah, in Hebrew, just means 'young woman'... basically, of marriage age, so for the time, that would basically be... post-puberty, roughly 14, up to maybe early 20s.

It can mean 'virgin', but it does not specifically, necessarily mean 'virgin'... in roughly the same way in English, right now, a 'young woman' could be a vrigin, is probably more likely to be a virgin than an old woman, generally speaking... but it absolutely does not categorically mean 'virgin'.

That's definitely the intended meaning of wearing a cross, and a really powerful and important scripture.

It's worth remembering though that 'cross' isn't the word that Jesus said here but the Greek word recorded is stau·rosʹ which means execution or torture stake and the cross wasn't a contemporary use for impailment by the Romans, primarily because a stake was a much more painful death than a cross.

The cross was a pagan idol for many centuries before Jesus death and was later rolled into the account of Jesus' death by the later Christian Church to help with the conversion of those pagans.