As a pastor, my attention these days is shifting towards our celebration of Easter as a Church family. As I think and read about resurrection, I keep going back to the sentiment of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: If Christ has not been raised, all our preaching is useless…your faith is useless…and we are to be pitied more than anyone in the world (NLT). He goes on throughout the chapter to say essentially, if Christ has been raised though, the world has a whole new story.
I’m with Paul. This business of life and faith, this story of God, really all hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If ever I come across “indisputable” evidence that Christ’s bones belong to the earth somewhere, I will quickly trade my belief for something not so useless. No offense, but the more liberal camps of “Christianity” that might deny bodily resurrection seem completely pointless to me. Why bother? On the other hand, if Christ has been raised, everything I thought I knew about life, death, hope, evil, justice, redemption, the natural world, etc all changes. (Side: This is why someone who doesn’t believe in resurrection and someone like myself have very little common ground to meet on. We live, quite literally, in completely different worlds.)
So I’m thinking at this point, I might need to make some kind of case for resurrection so as to explain why I would believe something so uncommon and even strange. Probably need a few posts to do that. But before I do, please hear me out: I’m not saying here the resurrection was some sort of magic trick to validate the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus or anything like that. That wasn’t Paul’s point either. Resurrection is so much more than just a stamp of authenticity. For Paul its the center-point of history. It’s the key to understanding the whole of creation history. It’s the locus of meaning for the world. Resurrection is God’s answer to every human longing, every cry for justice, every search for hope and meaning, every attempt to make sense of life’s beauty, joy, pain, etc.
That to simply say, my view of life and the world I live in sorta stands on one leg.
But so is belief in the resurrection of Jesus warranted? Obviously, I think so. Let me just give one reason why here, and then I’ll add a few more later.
Let’s stay with Paul to round this out. There’s really no explaining the life of Paul apart from an encounter with the risen Christ (as described in Acts 9). Prior to this event, the idea of one man walking out of the tomb in the middle of history was pretty well inconceivable for Paul. It wasn’t part of his religious or intellectual expectation at the time. It was nonsense in the Hellenistic culture he was part of and it went against the religious story he believed. Add to that, this resurrection rumor was threatening the stability of life in his homeland (messianic leaders and groups typically did). His intent, for understandable reasons, was to snuff out the Jesus movement before it destroyed the peace his people had worked on for so long.
Paul was also comfortably a part of the religious, social, and political elite in the culture. To join with a small, unattractive, and oft-despised band of Christ-followers would mean loss of power and privilege. It would mean himself becoming the object of scorn and hatred…the same scorn and hatred that motivated his (and other social/religious leaders) persecution of Christians. It would mean leaving the comforts of the synagoge to go worship behind locked doors in undisclosed locations. It would mean the possibility of trials, separation from loved ones, physical suffering, etc.
Yet, for some reason, this is exactly what happens. Paul trades everything, his religious perspectives, his security, his position of privilege for a life seemingly with nothing to offer. The only explanation that stands up to historical reason is that Paul met up with Jesus Christ who he’d previously assumed was dead in the grave. And as he has this encounter, his religious story now has a whole new center, a wonderfully surprising twist. Whatever hellenistic ideas he may have flirted with now have a whole new light shining on them. His take on power, privilege, comfort, security are redefined as he sees the greatest enemy of all (death) swallowed in defeat. His view towards suffering takes on the color of participation with his new conquering emperor-king.
Paul goes on, most likely, to die a martyr’s death, a martyr for a cause with nothing of prestige or worth in the eyes of the culture. There’s only one thing Paul stands to gain with his drastic life choice – participation in the life of a risen savior. And there’s just no reason to expect Paul to believe in such without an actual, worldview shaking encounter with that object of his newly acquired faith.
I think in this regard we are pretty similar. I don’t think your metaphysics is right, but I do agree that one enemy to be defeated is death( …. well… actually I’m kind of on the fence about it).
I’m just choosing to put my faith in science. So, here’s a question for you. If, within our lifetime, science reached a point where we were able to revive the dead and essentially live forever, would you need christ anymore?
If we could figure out whatever that thing is that connects the immaterial soul (I don’t think such a thing exists, but for the sake of entering your world-view), and take that thing and somehow make a soul jump to some other physical object that emulates that connection point, we could live forever. The soul/spirit jumping from one piece of material stuff to another as stuff degrades.
If we could achieve through science that which christ’s resurrection promises us through religion, would you continue bothering with religion?
Its interesting, I was just reading an article about Prometheus and his gift of technology (fire) to humans drowning in struggle.
Quick answer to your question as I run out the door: Biblically speaking, death’s decay has broad reaching effects…into the soul even. Hence we are in an age both of unprecedented technological advance and also unprecedented poverty, pain, and boredom (according to some I suppose). So until science can cure death’s curse not only on the body, but soul as well, an easy answer for me is, no.
And of course, if I’m convinced Christ has been raised, why would I rest in anything else?
Fun question though…to which I might respond more later…
Amen to that Aaron.
Science will never bring forgiveness of sin. I don’t want to live forever in a sin cursed body and world. The resurrection assures me that won’t happen as God was satisfied with Christ’s substitutionary life and death.
This is an interesting series; one thing that convinces me about the resurrection is the undeniable, historical change in people who saw Jesus die. They knew death & were convinced He was dead but less than a week later were so convinced He was alive that they no longer feared death.
And those who no longer feared death were the only ones who’d profit from a resurrection-scam. No scam artist dies to maintain his game. Believers (in whatever) will die willingly but not skeptics.