Easter Day 16 April 2006

Pic of the day: Is there a connection between being a Christian and role playing games? A friend of mine thinks so. Certainly there seems to be some rivalry between the two things. Could it be that some of us just cannot stand to live in a completely mundane world? Perhaps. But then again, perhaps the world is not really mundane, and the people who think so have chosen to close their eyes. Will we ever know?

Belief

Today is the day we Christians celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, this was all long ago so it doesn't much influence our everyday life, for most of us.

I don't think there is anything I could say that would convince the skeptics that Jesus really was raised from the dead. Conversely, there is probably nothing skeptics could do to convince those who believe in the resurrection. The irony of this is that people usually take these positions based on things entirely unrelated to the actual facts of history. We then pick the parts of history that supports our view. This applies to both believers and disbelievers, although most people only notice it in the other part.

If you're a Christan, it is probably not because you believe Jesus was raised from the dead, although you probably believe that to some extent. But the real reason is probably that your friends are Christians, or you were raised a Christian, or you think that you have to be a Christian because "Christian values" are inherently superior and people who don't believe in Jesus can't live good lives like Christians can. After all, why should they do anything good or abstain from anything wrong if they don't believe in Jesus? (The non-Christian observer, of course, will notice that Christians often use divine forgiveness as a sleeping pillow so they can continue to do bad things, and that good and bad behavior seems suspciously evenly distributed among the religions and the atheist enclaves as well.)

And so on, back and forth, a ping-pong game of religion. The real reasons are rarely the ones we give, and may not even be known to ourselves.

***

Of course, some people who were raised as Christians will denounce the faith exactly because they want to do things that are frowned upon by their religion. It may or may not be evil – like all religions I know of, Christianity has ritual sins, victimless crimes so to speak – but in any case, it is at least honest of them. Sadly, if you have been raised to believe deep down that your religion is all that guards your behavior, you could go all the way down in the gutter fast once you jump off. This has happened to some people that I knew of.

Conversely, I've had several friends who were way down, slaves of alcohol and other, forbidden pleasure drugs, and who Met Jesus and got new and much improved lives. Does this not prove that Jesus really lives? Sadly, no. It proves that faith in Jesus really lives. Some followers of Krishna report similar events in their lives, I'm not sure about the other religions. I think Jesus and Krishna kinda have a special power in that they are both very personal – they offer a strong bond of personal relationship with their followers. The major difference being, of course, that Jesus is real. ^_^

No really, I think that the Resurrection is probably the best documented impossible thing to ever have happened. If it weren't impossible, I am sure more people would have believed in it. But not many more. Because in the end, most people most of the time believe or disbelieve because it feels right, not because something happens to be true. If it does, so much the better, but it is not a major factor. This is not limited to religion, but I'll limit myself to this today.