Keith’s Blog

Easter is not about believing in God!

Without question, Easter is my favourite time of year. The blossoming of Spring; the lengthening of sunlight hours; the festive celebration of the resurrection; and especially the fact that, as yet, Hallmark and Cadbury’s have struggled to find any effective way to commercialise Good Friday as they have the events of Christmas – all contributes to my looking forward to, and my savouring of, this wonderful highlight of the Christian calendar.

This year as usual, all this talk about crucifixion and resurrection has initiated much discussion and debate in the media and in general conversation about the Easter events portrayed within the pages of the New Testament. Was this the greatest moment in human history or simply another tragic reminder of how the powerful can snuff out the light of any who dare oppose them? Was Jesus really who he claimed to be or was he just another in the long line of delusional messiahs who have blotted the landscape of our human history? Did Jesus actually rise from the dead bodily or was it simply some symbolic or spiritual occurrence to which the disciples bore witness? Can the bible’s version of the Easter events be trusted as eyewitness account or is it simply the fictional work of a later church?

These questions are, of course, very important ones and large amounts of energy, passion and resource are rightly expended in pursuing them. After all, Peter tells us in I Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” As followers of Jesus, we unquestionably do need to engage in this art of argumentation as polemics has been so nicely defined.

My only concern about all of this is that, if we allow ourselves to be drawn exclusively into these sorts of questions, we might well give the impression to others that the point of Easter, and the concern of Christians, is that people will come to believe in the bible and in the God it speaks about. And this is not the point at all!

I’m sure you’ve probably heard that old (and terribly non-pc) story about the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac who sat up all night wondering if there was a dog! I guess it eventually dawned on him. (Sorry!) But whether there is dog, or even a God, is simply not the issue at stake in the Christmas and Easter stories. The startling, mind-blowing, life-changing point of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is not that we can now believe that God exists. (As James, the brother of Jesus points out in James 2:19, even the demons believe that!) The point of the Gospel is that we can now be in relationship with the God who exists!

Easter is not the proof that God is out there. It is the proof that God is right here, right here among us, right here before us, and right now desires us to know his presence in our daily lives! And there is nothing in the world (egg, rabbit or dog!) that even comes close to tasting as wonderful as that!