Easter and hyperbolic claims
Pretty much the entire culture in which I am immersed is gearing up for the biggest week of the church year. Even in relatively unchurched Seattle, it seems to be all "Good Friday" and then Easter.
Dan Allender once asked "What is the most beautiful moment in the history of creation?" To which his answer was "the morning Jesus rose from the grave."
And he went on to say that you can't have that without "Good Friday". He talked about how his two life themes are death and resurrection, death and resurrection.
Must we insist on calling the bad which led to good "good"? It's a stupid name for the day
Some largish chunk--probably a majority--of the people celebrating Easter on Sunday will do so while "believing" (whatever that means) that some relatively large number of their neighbors (and I mean neighbors in the global, human sense here) are going to go through a lovely little thing called "eternal conscious suffering of the lost".
There will be a lot of talk about "salvation".
On Sunday April 12, also, 180,000 people (or so) will die. Theoretically, according to most Christians, (working off percentages here) the best that a good 120,000 of them can hope for is actual destruction in the lake of fire. But ... I'm pretty sure that "orthodoxy" has it that they will burn forever, fully aware of it.
I don't understand how you can hold "salvation" and "resurrection" and "hope" together in your being with that "reality". Just don't get it.
Also on Sunday, April 12th, at least 20,000 children will die as the termination of their starvation. Yep.
Also on Sunday, April 12th, something like US$2.7 Billion dollars will be spent on arms. Arms as in stuff to blow people up and kill and maim them and destroy their homes. Stuff that's *way* more effective that crosses.
On Sunday April 12th, claims will be made, in churches around the world, about resurrection, salvation, and hope--claims which seem to me to be far bigger than can possibly meet up with reality.
Feels like the world will still mostly be stuck in Black Friday, while all the Christians celebrate Easter.
BICBW
1 comment:
Good Friday was originally called "God Friday", a version of what most of the Christian world (outside the English-speaking world) calls "Holy Friday". Is it good? That, as you point out, is highly ambiguous. Yet to call it holy means that the meaning of this death that was like so many other deaths is also unlike so many other deaths.
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