Easter Reflections I

I came across an article recently that opened with the following statement:  Perhaps the most boring question one can ever direct at a religion is to ask whether or not it is ‘true’. The author went on to claim that Easter “commemorates an incident of catastrophic failure”[1]. Well, we’ll see. My view is that deciding whether the events commemorated at Easter are true is far from boring. Not bothering to consider whether they are true is probably a product of the author completely misunderstanding what was going on. But let’s go back to the thorny issue of truth.

We now apparently live in a culture that has a real problem with truth. For some, and for a long time, the idea that there is something “out there” to be known is a non-starter. For others, even if there is an “out there”, it cannot be known in any certain way. This sort of thing has been argued back and forth for centuries. Meanwhile, most of humanity has just got on with life, not really bothering too much whether they could/could not prove in any absolute sense that it was all “real”. Family, food, employment, cushions, art, music, football, Radio 4, Monty Python and model railways might all be illusions, but they are comforting illusions. Interestingly (at least to me), even those who think that truth is an illusion seem to spill a lot of ink trying to persuade other people of the truth that truth is an illusion. It is almost as though it matters.

In fact most of us seem to live with the notion that it’s important to know what is true and what is not. Not all truth is equally important I’ll grant you. For most people, most of the time, knowing that there is a river that flows through Merseyside to the sea, is of only trivial importance. It’s maybe useful in the odd pub quiz, but it hardly counts as one of life’s great truths. Mind you, it becomes considerably more important if you have to make your way from Liverpool city centre to Birkenhead – look at a map (hopefully a true representation of certain geographical features) if you don’t believe me.

Clearly there are some people who claim that certain events that occurred in and around an obscure city in the Middle East called Jerusalem millennia ago have continuing significance. As a matter of observation, these events have been celebrated annually throughout large parts of the world, and by a growing and now large proportion of humanity, ever since. There are reports that provide some level of access to those original precipitating events. Can we reach a judgement on the truth of what those events were, whether they are important and indeed whether some of them were catastrophic? I think we can, and I think we should. I think we owe it to ourselves to investigate for ourselves what the fuss is about. We could just surf the web and explore the blogosphere. We could depend on the opinions of others. I much prefer the notion of doing as much of the work as I can for myself. Of course, I’ll have to take some things on trust. But as I’ve argued here before, some level of trust is always required in any enquiry. How much trust would be too much? Well, if I’m standing at a bridge wondering if it can bear my weight and get me safely across a river, I know some of the signs I need to look for. Does it go all the way across? Is it fairly clear what’s keeping it up? Does it appear steady as I set out, or does it begin to creak alarmingly? Of course I could be fooled. But not to attempt the crossing could be equally foolish, particularly if there’s a pressing reason to cross the river.

As far as Christianity is concerned, the question “is it true?” has to be the key question. Christianity depends on claims about things that happened (or didn’t happen). While some of these things are probably more important than others, if any of them turn out to be demonstrably untrue, then the credibility of the whole will take a hit. If the major claims are untrue, then the whole thing comes crashing down. Certain of the key claims are clearly unusual, and some, on the surface at least, approach the bizarre (at least from a 21^st century standpoint). It’s tempting to dismiss these out of hand, a priori. This is a temptation worth resisting.

The Easter story turns on one of the most famous characters in history called Jesus. Four main accounts compiled from eye witness testimony from his own time have come down to us, along with accounts and interpretations of others who claimed to know him. These various sources have been frequently attacked but have yet to be fatally undermined. They tell us quite a lot about the life of Jesus, including what they claim was a miraculous birth (also still celebrated). They tell us much of what he said. But they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on his death, implying that it has some significance beyond the ending of a particular life.

Jesus as portrayed in these accounts does not come over as a fanatic, a rabble rouser or a tyrant. He seems to have been attractive to some, and a curiosity to many. He doesn’t seem that interested in gathering a movement around himself. Indeed, in at least one of the accounts (by one of his followers called John) he seems to go out of his way to drive the merely interested away. For all his apparently humility and simplicity, it is his claims about himself that stick out. His original audience were in no doubt that he made one particularly objectionable claim. It’s a claim that many have made for themselves, and today it would be taken as a sign of poor mental health. He claimed to be God. One modern writer about Jesus introduced the subject by confessing that it was “easy to sympathise with scepticism” because the claims made by Jesus and his early followers “are staggering, and indeed offensive”[2]. And C.S. Lewis famously pointed out that these claims paint both Jesus and enquirers about Easter into a corner:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[3]

It was at a place just outside Jerusalem that his claims and his death collided. By all accounts he died a barbaric, if not entirely unique, death. In Jesus day, those in control of where he lived had a standard form of execution. This involved literally nailing the condemned person to a wooden frame, raising them up, and waiting for them to die from suffocation, blood loss, thirst or a combination all three (plus various other encouragements like breaking legs, or sticking with spears). Even in the midst of these excruciating circumstances (which he had some insight into before they happened) he verbalised forgiveness for his torturers, made provision for his mother, comforted someone being executed with him, and made several other statements. None was a statement of regret. One was tantamount to a final claim. It is reported that he shouted “finished” (probably a single word in his original language). Even in dying (an extended process lasting several hours), he was claiming that he had accomplished something.

And there the story should have ended. If this was a man, a good man, a clever man, an exemplary man, ending as all men do, what possible significance could he have for the rest of us? Less than none. This would not be a sad story of what could have been. It might be a story that was instructive, but hardly one that would in any way be transformative. For most of us it would be more of a footnote than a catastrophe. But remember he claimed to be something considerably more than a man. If the story ends with his death, then this claim is clearly bogus. This, and probably all of his other claims are untrue, his credibility fatally flawed. He might have occasionally said something clever, or even something that appears high and moral, but it’s not. He got the one thing he could truly know wrong; he didn’t ultimately even know himself, never mind anything else. So why then twenty centuries later is there still even a question? Why a story to repeat? Why claims to consider?

Because of what happened next.

1.       “Easter for Atheists”, The Philosopher’s Mail 

2.       Donald MacLeod, “The Person of Christ”

3.       C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”