Why the Resurrection?

     Jesus came to the world to bring a message, a message that the old ways – animal sacrifice, ritual cleansing, fear of a thundering angry God – no longer apply. It was a radical message, even for the Jewish masses who already believed that the strong should take care of the weak, and that there is a single omnipotent God, not a gaggle of warlike Greek and Egyptian gods. For the Jewish clerical and political elite the message was like a declaration of war.

     God must have thought it was time to send the message, and that sending Jesus was the way to get it across to Mankind. God gave Jesus the power to perform miracles – raising the dead, healing the sick and deformed, making wine from water, food for thousands from a few fish and loaves of bread. The news of the miracles spread over the region. Everyone knew of his message and his miracles, otherwise why would he have earned the wrath of the rulers?

     Yet that news and those demonstrations of his divinity were not enough. In addition to all that, he had to be crucified and then raised from the dead. What did that accomplish? What did God intend the crucifixion and resurrection to do that the miracles did not? Was the resurrection more proof that Jesus was the Son of God? Was it the crowning proof, or was it something entirely different? Did it not actually happen?

     Many,(most?) Christians believe that those who question the resurrection, those who are skeptical of the miracles are condemned to Hell. Fundamentalists even believe that those who doubt the literal truth of every word of the Bible are so condemned.

     That means that Jews and Muslims, even if they are kind and righteous people, worship the same God, believe in and live by Jesus' divine message, are all condemned to Hell. All their piety, all their goodness, all their belief that Jesus joined God in Heaven is trumped by their lack of belief that Jesus came back to life after he died.

     That simply does not square with my understanding of Jesus' message. I cannot believe that a God as described by Jesus would be so single-minded. I cannot believe that Jesus would teach such a doctrine.

     Jesus often said that belief in "me" is the only way to Heaven. Did he ever say that belief in "my resurrection" is the only way to Heaven? Is it an assumption by devout Christians that belief in Jesus meant belief in his resurrection? Am I not a Christian if I believe that Jesus' message is divine, if I live by it, but believe that the story of his resurrection is just a story made up by early organizers of the Church to keep the focus? That makes no theological sense.

     What does make sense is that early Christian preachers (primarily Paul and Irenaeus), needed to unify the Church. That unification would have been impossible if each congregation were free to believe that they could reach Heaven through Understanding and Reason, which was the essence of Jesus' actual message. (That is also the message in the Gospel of Thomas, which was ordered destroyed by Irenaeus about 100 AD, but was instead hidden in a cave at Nag Hammadi where it was discovered in 1945.) The Church, the entire Christian movement, depended on maintaining a focused, single immutable belief – staying on message – that independent thought and reasoning are not enough to reach Heaven. You must also believe in this magical event, the raising of Jesus from the dead, that flies in the face of reason, logic and all human experience.

     God created a universe that functions by a set of consistent, divinable rules. Gravity always attracts; it never repels. Time passes in one direction; no one ever began life as an old person, developing backwards into infancy. Yet Christians must believe in the suspension of one of those rules else they cannot reach Heaven? It makes no sense on any level.