Nailing Down Jesus

I am sometimes baffled by the way other people think. I am fully aware that not everyone sees the world the same way I do; I made that point recently in "All the News That Fits." But I occasionally forget that there are those out there who don't think Heaven matters at all; many don't even believe Heaven exists. Perhaps I am guilty of having the same closed mind I accuse them of having.

I have previously referred to my reconnection with Philip Yancey's book, The Jesus I Never Knew. (Some may wonder if I am getting a percentage of the royalties since I mention the book so often. I have no motive other than to recommend the book to anyone who seeks to understand who Jesus is.) In the chapter on the ascension Yancey wonders what the world would be like if Jesus had not come out of the grave. It strikes me that those who don't believe Christ rose now live in just such a world, at least by their own measure. Those who scoff at religion, particularly the miraculous episodes, imagine that they live in a world without any significant impact bythe "myths"of Scripture.

To pretend that an historical event never happened is foolish; to believe that the founding events of the Christian religion have not had a singular effect on the world is ludicrous. Even if you could ignore the millions of lives which have been undeniably transformed by Christian belief, you would stumble into the system of hospitals and schools which owe their very existence in large part to religious principles put into practice. Though present day doubters try to deny the religious underpinnings of our forefathers, America would not have taken its present form, if any form at all, were it not for the foundational principles of natural law taught by John Locke and others, which spring directly from Judeo-Christian religious teachings.

Christians themselves often behave as if they doubt the implications of the resurrection. Yancey writes, "In many respects I would find an unresurrected Jesus easier to accept. Easter makes him dangerous.... Easter means he must be loose out there somewhere. Like the disciples, I never know where Jesus might show up.... As Fredrick Buechner says, 'we can never nail him down, not even if the nails we use are real and the thing we nail him to is a cross...' Killing Jesus, says Walter Wink, was like trying t destroy a dandelion seed-head by blowing on it."

The last thing anyone would logically do to convince doubters is repeat the unlikely story that their leader had come back from the grave, unless he had in fact done just that. This Easter season, if you feel self-conscious telling the old story, remember what Paul said, "I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed." (2Tim 1:12) If you feel like you are bucking the trends, swimming upstream, fighting every day just to do what you believe is right, you are in good company; that's what they nailed Jesus for just three days before the first Easter.