Too Good to be True?

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As most of you know, Sunday is Easter.

It’s not about bunnies and eggs, of course, but arguably is the most important and significant feast in the Christian calendar. It’s also about the most astonishing – and let’s face it – incredible belief in the long list of astonishing and incredible beliefs of Christians.

The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, is blunt: “…If Christ is not raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” In other words, the resurrection is absolutely central to Christian faith.

Not Just Jesus?

But it gets even more astonishing and incredible. Paul insists that it’s not just a matter of Jesus being raised, but that all (believers and non-believers?) will also rise from the dead.

Many may ask, “How can rational people be expected to believe this?” Think of all the people who have died – including people blown to bits in wars, people whose bodies evaporated in nuclear blasts, people whose bodies disintegrated at the bottom of oceans and lakes. How is it possible for their bodies, not to mention the billions buried in cemeteries, to be resurrected?

The only honest answer is, we don’t know.

We just have to dig deep into our capacity for belief, recalling that Jesus said in another context in Matthew’s gospel that “…with God all things are possible.”

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Easter is another reminder that much of what religious people believe is unbelievable in strictly human terms, and that God – and much of the spiritual – requires a faith that is often “blind.” Although faith is rational, it simply can’t be explained adequately in human terms because God and the spiritual are in a different dimension, one that traditionally has been described as “mystery.”

I know, many skeptics may see the term “mystery” as a copout, a category for all the things about religion that can’t be adequately explained. But isn’t that why everything we know about God and the spiritual requires faith?

We can be up on our theology and biblical studies but none of that replaces the need for faith. There are, however, many levels of faith, including those that acknowledge skepticism along with faith.

Jesus seems to refer to this in several gospel parables, such as the one about “the sower” whose seed fell along a path where birds ate it, on rocky ground where it couldn’t take root and the sun scorched it, and among thorns that chocked it - all analogies for faith that doesn’t thrive or survive.

“Other seeds,” said Jesus, “fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” To me, that says that God accepts our different capacities for belief and for acting on our beliefs.

Only What We See?

We humans are accustomed – even from our earliest history – to legitimize only what we can see or experience from our senses. But we can’t “see” our emotions or feelings, abstract ideas like freedom and justice, memories, and scientific phenomenon like gravity, electromagnetic waves and microbes (even though we can measure them in other ways).  

Yes, faith can be explained, but not adequately enough to arrive at certainty. If you’re looking for certainty in this world, you’re in the wrong world. But from a Christian perspective, the old adage that the only sure things are taxes and death is only partially true.

And, like much of what we Christians believe, Easter is only apparently “too good to be true.”

 

       

 

 

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