Sunday 20 April 2003

Pic of the day: Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot. I trust you will soon understand why I spent a long time online looking for just this picture.

Easter mornings

I guess I should write something deep and spiritual, since this is the journal for Easter day, the most holy day of the year for us Christians. Except, well, I don't believe in the holiness of days. I much suspect that Jesus didn't either, although as a Jew he kept the Sabbath and the other holy days as per the covenant of Moses. He did not shrink back from healing on the Sabbath, though, despite the warnings of the religious experts of his day. And he definitely was less than impressed with holy places, which I believe is in the same league.

I seem to be saying this each year, but it bears repeating: Jesus doesn't die each year and rise again each year. That was the fertility gods of the Bronze Age, Baal and Tammuz and their ilk. I think we can agree (except theologians) that Jesus is not a fertility god. (He certainly never had that effect on me at least.)

***

Now this brings me neatly to the point: It's too bad there aren't more resurrections. After almost 2000 years, people are kinda starting to doubt the whole thing. OK, they doubted the whole thing from the outset, even though there were like 500 people who had seen Jesus alive after his very public execution. Of course, people keep seeing Elvis too; but among these were people who had known Jesus for years. It bears special mention that his mother was one of those who were convinced that he was risen from the dead (although it is unclear whether she met him or just heard it from the new adoptive son John and his friends). People, do you really think your Mom would believe that you were risen from the dead? She probably knows you too well for that. And a mother's grief is too acute, too concrete, too achingly real to buy any cheap lies. Yet on Pentecost, she was among the believers assembled.

And yet, today, thousands of mothers around the world grieve over their sons (and daughters) who have been taken from them in the year that passed. And they come to the grave, but it is still there, still hiding the one who was more precious to them than life itself. There are no angels, no bright lights, no returned loved ones. Easter comes and goes, and only the passage of time offers a cup of wine mixed with vinegar: A small measure of forgetting that feels for a while as bitter as the remembrance did.

Why this tardiness? If the dead are to be resurrected anyway, would it really cost the Almighty so much to let a few of them get up now, perhaps stop by friends and family and wave goodbye before passing into the Elsewhere before their eyes? Is the uncertainty so precious to God, and if so, what does he gain from it?

I can certainly sympathize with those who are atheists on grounds of reason (as opposed to those who think that if they just reject their parent's religion they are also free from moral constraints). Throughout my life I have got along well with personal atheists, more so I guess than impersonal Christians. There is certainly reasonable doubt here, either way.

***

And perhaps that is the point. One thing I have mentioned before, is the "Judeo-Christian creation myth" in Genesis. God planted a tree to knowledge of good and evil, although at the time the young humans were not allowed to eat its fruit. It was not the Devil that planted the tree, and it was certainly not some random mutation or some other mistake. My understanding is that to God, freedom was more important than salvation. That is kinda disturbing to think about, but also kinda empowering.

There is a fine line between God abandoning us completely, and God parading his presence so strongly that we all are lined up like iron filings around a magnet. How close can God be and still not overwhelm us? We hate and detest rapists, and with extreme prejudice those who force themselves on children. Would we love a God who forced himself on our spirit? Would we even be able to love God without the distance he has created between himself and his creation? I don't know. You decide for yourself. That's God's gift to you.