Easter Sunday 2015
In many ways I find it hard to believe that I am writing this. Here I sit, a reasonably well-educated, rational and, hopefully, open-minded (probably politically Liberal) man of 50 years, writing on the world-wide web in the 21st Century…
…and what – or who – am I going to be writing about? Jesus Christ. (No, that’s not an 
exclamation.) Really? You have to wonder why.
What I mean is, in this Modern age “Why does Christianity persist?”
Surely this outdated, inflexible, (sometimes intolerant?), un-reasonable, eclectic, un-fashionable movement should have have died out by now? Haven’t we progressed past the need for these simplistic ideals about Love, Service and Sacrifice?
History is littered with the ways in which this supernatural belief system has failed. We’ve had the extremes of persecution and over simplification. There was the acceptance of Papal authority over government – indeed the whole ‘rule’ of Christianity – for better or worse – across the Middle ages. Then came the reformations – and revolutions – the splits from and against the ‘church of the establishment.’
So far so good. Perhaps we can look back with a little arrogance and pity, and bemoan the poor folk of the distant past who didn’t know any better. Yet it persists today. It persists in me. And tens of thousands of others. Why? Shouldn’t we, here in 2015, do better?
You see when we reach the 1700’s the mystery really deepens. Here comes the age of change – the emergence of enlightenment – the rule of human Reason. I don’t need to chart it for you – if you are reading this you are it’s child. You are here because of it.
And at every stage of human progress for the last 300 years the Herald’s have announced – “God is dead!” or “This marks the end of Christianity!”
Think about it – the staggering changes – Empires have risen and fallen. Ideologies have come into fashion and gone out again. Terrors and wars. Even theologies and concepts about what it is to be human – what it is to be a civilization – or just a society – have all been through tremendous change. All in the name of progress. Of moving forward.
- Rationalism
- Enlightenment
- Capitalism
- Communism
- Humanism
- Socialism
- Fascism
- Imperialism
- Atheism
- ..next?
Nietzsche
(And let’s not forget Scientific enquiry and technology. As if we could. Here in the West we have literally staked our lives on the provable, testable, quantifiable nature of the universe (or universes?) and our ability to manipulate it.)
We control it. We define it. We are masters of our own destiny. Given time we can achieve anything….can’t we?
And yet we Christians persist in our ‘Fairy-tale- naïve-beliefs’. Why?
Here I sit. I am like you. I am as much a product of the 21st Century as anyone. You and I, born in the 1960’s probably share a whole host of experiences and touchstones.
So why am I celebrating Easter? Why am I dedicating my future to being a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth – a wandering Jewish preacher from 1st Century Palestine?
My initial response is to ask you to look back a different way – rather than asking why Christianity persists, perhaps we should ask:
“Why have so many of the other movements failed to persist?“
“Have any brought change beyond circumstances? Have they brought change to people’s hearts and souls – actually solving our problems of guilt, anxiety, fear or pride?”
Now that is not to say that, on balance, the general lot of humanity hasn’t marched forward. Nor can I deny that, for some, the Church itself has been cited as propagating the terrible four – guilt, anxiety, fear and pride.
So, why am I writing, in plain sight of all my modern-enlightened-living-in-the-‘real’-world contemporaries, that I have a personal relationship with this same Jesus?
That I believe he was raised from the dead and is alive today?
In short, why does Christianity persist in people like myself?
Perhaps because it works.
For all the progress much misery, loneliness, guilt and pain remain – seemingly untouched by the ‘Civilization’ of our societies. I, like so many, have found that there is nothing in the World that will ease the burdens of being in the World.
If Easter is indeed a myth I am sure that Christianity would have faded by now – just another crazy idea or fad.
It survives because Christ is alive and well – He still calls, still seeks and still comforts and restores…where all else fails. If He was another crazy religious fanatic His time would have surely come and gone by now. But if He is the Son of God?
It may well be a mystery – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also true.
Easter blessings.
wepilgrim 