The resurrection of Christ, as imagined in the Japanese animated movie “The Golden Laws”, a story not so much about Jesus as about time traveling teens. Still, I enjoy watching that scene. ^_^ 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is and should be the part that sends people running, either away from or toward the religion. It is the central mystery (or madness) of the faith, the impossibility above all others. Various attempts have been made to make it more palatable, not only in the modern age but already a couple centuries after the event:  It was to be understood spiritually, or figuratively, not literally, said some. The Church eventually decided to leave it unexplained, for the most part, and that is probably for the best. It seems fair to me if the world thinks Christians stupid if not outright crazy, and worthy of pity: After all, this is how Christians feel about the world as well.

But one interesting detail about the role of the Resurrection has occurred to me only later in my life: The apostle Paul, who is the one who most frequently talks about Christ’s death and resurrection in us, in our lives, as the death of the old life and the breakthrough of a new and heavenly life – this apostle is also the one who most strongly insists that the Resurrection was thoroughly real. If Jesus was not resurrected, then our faith is nothing, says this same man. He refers to several contemporaries who saw Jesus after the Resurrection, as well as an unspecified group of over 500, most of whom were still alive at the time of his writing. This is not a historian, rather Paul wrote about things that happened in public in his own time. And yet, he is the one who keeps going on about “Christ in us” and the inner meaning of His death and resurrection.

You’d think those two viewpoints would appear from two different sources, right? One taking the Resurrection literally, another symbolically. But on the contrary, it is the same person who is most focused on one who also goes on about the other.

Now it may be argued that Paul joined the new religion well after Jesus had left for Heaven, and there is no hint that he ever met the risen Lord except in visions. On the other hand, the Resurrection is clearly the big selling point of the young church in the mouth of Peter as well, who was in the thick of it. You have to be very creative to find any hints that the first Christians did not believe in the literal resurrection of Christ. And yet, most of them don’t mention it as a spiritual process in the life of Christians. It may have been enough for them to know that their martyrdom would be temporary: Jesus would come back and raise them from the dead, so death was not a permanent setback. Any symbolic meaning of the event seems to have been little discussed, if at all. Except for Paul, although John also makes some mention of Christ in us.

Now I am not a preacher, or at least I try not to be. I just wanted to point out the strange connection, that the literal and the symbolic belief seemed to go hand in hand, rather than being opposites as they are seen today.