Faced with the prospect of raising another human being when my wife was pregnant with our first child 13 years ago, I felt compelled to revisit the decision I made much earlier as an adult to abandon my Christian faith. I thought to myself the same thing I suspect a lot of other new parents think: it would sure make things easier if I were Christian. I would have more certain answers for my son when he asked life's most profound questions about where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. We would fit in much better with the majority Christian culture, making things more socially comfortable. I would circumvent my fear that maybe people were right who said that kids growing up without religious values are morally deficient.
However, I knew down deep that my decision to rejoin the Christian faith could not be based on what was easiest. For me, my decision had to be based on whether I really believed Christianity's foundational claim -- that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. I was curious: what were the actual arguments for and against Jesus' resurrection?
As I dug into this question, what I found was a battlefield. At one end of the spectrum I found people like investigative reporter and best-selling author Lee Strobel, backed by dozens of evangelical scholars, affirming the historical reliability of the gospels and saying of the evidence for Jesus' resurrection, "I had seen defendants carted off to the death chamber on much less convincing proof!" On the other end of the spectrum I found people like former Bishop of Newark John Spong, also a best-selling author, rejecting the gospel accounts of Jesus' burial and concluding that his body "was probably dumped unceremoniously into a common grave." The idea that such key stories in the gospels as Jesus' burial could be legends is also backed by dozens of scholars, one example being those of the Jesus Seminar, who conclude, "The original story of the empty tomb was a Markan fiction." These radically different takes on Christian origins proliferate Internet discussions where the two sides trade swipes in unequivocal ways. For example, one blogger says, "The evidence is simply overwhelming. If you believe in gravity, you have to believe that Christianity is also true." Another blogger says in a book review, "Christianity is made up of a series of fantastic and contradictory stories backed by no evidence whatsoever."
Notice, however, that none of the statements above has anything to do with faith. Each side of this issue is laying claim to evidence and reason. I think this is a positive thing, for evidence and reason is a place where everyone can meet. It is also a place from which I think more people are becoming interested in examining religion.
As I navigated the arguments above, what I discovered about myself was that my doubt in Jesus' resurrection was an impossible hurdle to clear by those arguing with disputable 2,000-year-old evidence. This same level of doubt is shared by many other people, including two of our nation's founding fathers, both of whom believed in God. Thomas Paine, in his book The Age of Reason, declared:
[Jesus' disciple] Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say [in the gospels], would not believe, without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me and for every other person, as for Thomas.
Thomas Jefferson went so far as to take scissors to the Bible and then paste together his own Jefferson Bible -- without the resurrection in it.
But if the common meeting place of believer and non-believer is evidence and reason, a pressing question emerges for the non-believer: what, then, happened 2,000 years ago to give rise to the belief that Jesus was resurrected from the dead? A good starting point is to ask what normally would have happened to the body of a crucified criminal from the lower classes that was allowed to be removed from a Roman cross. When I study the evidence, the answer seems to be just what Bishop Spong suggested -- a ground burial, probably in the Kidron or Hinnom valley, with nobody attending except for an indifferent burial crew who only cared to mark the site with chalk or a pile of loose rocks to warn of uncleanness. As Jesus' dejected followers made the journey back to their homes in Galilee, instead of a discovered empty tomb, the founding event of Christianity may have simply been "the discovery of a new and positive way in which to speak of Jesus' death and of Jesus after his death, that is, a new way of perceiving Jesus."* This may have been the event of Easter.
For those interested in the answers to more contemporary questions, I can report that 13 years after deciding Christianity was not for me, my kids are doing just fine. They are comfortable with the mystery of life's most profound questions, and their mix of virtue and mischief is about the same as their Christian friends.
References:
1. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1998), pg. 356.
2. John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (NewYork, NY: HarperCollins, 1994), pg. 225.
3. The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus (New York, NY: Polebridge, 1998), pg. 266.
* Â Paul M. van Buren, According to the Scriptures (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), pg. 21.
Kris Komarnitsky is the author of Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?
Resurrection of Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Death and resurrection of Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1. Easter and its resurrection element are based on Ishtar or Inanna of the Sumerian pantheon of gods. She came down to Earth in an "Egg." Hence, the Easter Egg of rebirth. Religions prior to Ishtar basically dealt with the same idea of rebirth during spring equinox.
2. When you address the idea of Jesus dying on the cross, and rising after three days, please consider the following. When the Emperor Constantine was trying to create a state religion with only one "savior god," he proposed seven different savior figures to his priests at the first ecumenical conference in 325-335 C.E. at Nicaea.
3. Constantine first proposed Hesus Krestus, his English druid savior god. Next came Sol Invictus, Mithra, Julius Caesar, John the Baptist, Simon Magus, and Jesus the Nazarene. Most of these "christs" or "anointed ones" had been killed and resurrected on the third day of their death.
Constantine suffered the mania of his bishops for many months, and he finally decided that the official state savior god of his empire should be Hesus Krestus. There was no "J" in the alphabet at that time, but when the letter appeared the name was changed to Jesus Christ.
The bishops never did like the idea of the English druid deity Hesus being the savior god of the empire. When Constantine died, they began rewriting his "New Testamonies" into the "New Testament," and in doing so they created the modern "catholic" or universal church.
4. In the cases of all of the proposed saviors, their lives, deaths, and resurrections were based on astronomical allegories. The spring equinox deals with the three days when the sun is seen to be dead on the horizon just before it begins rising in the heavens again in a rebirth. From the time of ancient man to the present, the astronomical event has been deceitfully depicted as an actual human event by the priesthoods.
5. From Ishtar, Inanna, Isis, Horus, Hesus, Jesus, Mithra, Sol Invictus, inter alias, the spring equinox rebirth or resurrection element of the Christian and other faiths has always been an astronomical allegory. Your priests never tell you these things; they only want to confuse you with mythology and dogma. So, each spring, your priests lead the sheep down the mountainside where they fleece them, and devour them for the church hierarchy's benefit. When you mention to your priest or minister that his Easter Sunday sermon is based on an astronomical allegory, his eyes will glaze over.
If you are interested in researching this topic, I'd suggest that you try and find a contemporary account of Jesus. I've found none. The only references to this supposed son of god came years after his supposed death.
A resurrection is hard enough to swallow. The revivification of someone who probably didn't exist is even harder to digest.
All you really have is circumstancial evidence based on personal opinion that God probably doesnt exist. That final step to concluding God doesnt exist requires a leap of ..dare I say.. intellectual faith
The worst part is confronting these folks with my thoughts and getting a blank stare at least or a threat of violence at most.
"It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear; the best surviving evidence we now have respecting that affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who lived in the times this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say, it is not true. IT HAS LONG APPEARED TO ME A STRANGE INCONSISTENCY TO CITE THE JEWS AS PROOF OF THE TRUTH OF THE STORY. IT IS JUST THE SAME AS IF A MAN WERE TO SAY, I WILL PROVE THE TRUTH OF WHAT I HAVE TOLD YOU BY PRODUCING THE PEOPLE THAT SAY IT IS FALSE."
Christian Mythology (the Bible) does not offer reliable "witnessed" evidence.
If an adult person claims to have seen the real Santa Claus fly by, in a sled pulled by nine flying reindeer, is his claim made more credible, evidence wise, if he also claims that there were more than 500 other unnamed witnesses that saw it too? Nah, it's called hearsay. Inadmissable.
The bible is not an historically accurate document.. so? How does that negate the existence of God?
Actually, I think it is rather much harder to live a life as a Christian, but easier, in that sense, to make certain assumptions for our kids in a "Western-Style Christianized" Society.
But further out from that specific question, there are still questions on our origins, and I feel that is another serious question to ponder and explain to the kids. From that, there is also the task of explaining to the kids why things go "wrong" in this world, and why "bad" things happen. But to do this, we need some worldview with an explanation of what is "right" and what it means when "good" things happen, and why do they deserve either? Why isn't it fair"? Tough Job, either way.
Also, do note that as your children grow up, they will also come to the same crossroads you reached. I do hope you are giving them the freedom to examine the evidence anew, and to reason for themselves which path to take.
1) There is a "god"
2) Jesus actually existed.
There is no evidence, or good reason to believe, that either of these assumptions have any validity whatsoever. Therefore, the examination of the truth of the resurrection is an exercise in futility.
There's really no need for a middleman between us and God.. We each have our own relationship with God whether for good or bad, It's comparable to the relationship each of us have with our mother. God doesnt even require our worship.. just our belief in the infinite... and to be a good person i.e avoid diabolical acts.
All the rest after that is just theater to fulfill our own human need for... theater
Admittedly the Gospel of Thomas is under the influence of so-called gnostic teachings. A significant body of writings that has equal claim to the canon of the New Testament exists. Why these were ignored can only be guessed. We can understand to some extent by watching what is happening in current affairs to such stories as the decision to go to war In Iraq or uncovering the illegal wiretapping under the G.W.Bush administration. Those in charge always try to control bad news. Some things never change.
Don't you find it also curious that a poor man, part of a religious minority in an unfashionable backwater of the world's most powerful empire caused enough stir that, despite repeated attempts for a few hundred years by this empire to stamp out Christianity, it became the dominant religion of the region?
The evidence is in the fact it kept going. It would have been so easy to forget about Jesus, go back to the way thing were, not be persecuted unto death, but these people didn't. Something happened. It wasn't a made up story. ( Truly, it would have been a lot better written and certainly wouldn't have included all the unflattering stories of the disciples.) These people witnessed something that made them believe, made them take risks, made them change the culture they'd known for centuries.
I understand people wanting proof; proof does make it easy. But TBH, if some 3rd party confirmation were discovered in a cave today, do you really think it would change anyone's mind? Or would it be called a fraud or the product of more "god delusion"?