There was an interesting article in the Detroit Free Press
this Easter Sunday titled KENSINGTON MEGACHURCH REACHES OUT TO DOUBTERS FOR
EASTER by Niraj Warikoo.
It is a timely article but what caught my eye was that the
pastor at the church (Dave Wilson) was going to tackle the skepticism about the
resurrection of Jesus…really?
I will agree that without the resurrection on Easter Sunday,
Christianity would not have a purpose to exist; their whole theology is based
on the belief that Jesus died for our sins (whatever they may be) and was
raised from the dead and will eventually return to earth.
Having just recently buried my mother, I still remember the
priest at the Catholic service saying that we do not die but go to heaven to be
with the risen Jesus forever and ever.
I do not dabble so much in theology; people believe whatever
they want to believe, but I do like to examine the evidence for said beliefs
using whatever sources are available to us and in the case of Jesus, those
sources are very few.
Pastor Wilson at least admits that there is no way to prove
that Jesus was raised from the dead and even the synoptic Gospels which are not
historical documents have very conflicting stories about the resurrection. The
original ending of Mark had no resurrection just an empty tomb. Later added
endings to Mark had Jesus appearing to certain people.
New scholarship doubts that Jesus was ever buried since the
Romans had a standard policy of leaving the crucified on the cross as examples
to others. Their bodies were eaten by birds and dogs and their bones were then
thrown into a dump. Obviously the Gospel writers could not have that as an
ending to their Messiah so they conjured up a resurrection story.
St. Paul, who basically invented Christianity but never met
Jesus or even talked about any of Jesus’ teachings, was also conflicted about
the resurrection as to whether it was a bodily resurrection or just a spiritual
resurrection. To Paul, the resurrection is the basis of his teachings without
which they would be empty of meaning.
As always, Christianity injects its religious observances into
natural (pagan) celebrations with Easter coming at the time people are
celebrating the arrival of spring as Christmas occurs on the natural (pagan)
celebration of the arrival of a New Year.
In the end, Pastor Wilson does not have a specific plan to
show skeptics that the resurrection actually occurred; there is no way to do
that. What he wants is people to come to the church where he will wow them with
a musical and dramatic extravaganza that will make them feel good and want to
believe that Christianity is somehow based on actual occurrences…
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