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Easter - the Line in the Sand

4/21/2019

1 Comment

 
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Easter is the centerpiece of the Christian faith. Especially in western cultures, it is the line in the sand between belief and unbelief.


Either


Jesus was a good man and wise teacher who was seen as a threat by the political and religious leaders of his time, was executed and died like anyone else, but whose teachings on charity and the value of all human beings, the poor as well as the powerful, went on to transform the world and are responsible for much of what can be considered good in human civilization.


Or


Jesus was the anointed one of God, sent to save us from ourselves, the creator assuming the weaknesses of the created, in an eternal act of love and forgiveness which went on to transform the world and is responsible for much what can be considered good in human civilization, with his resurrection from the dead validating his divine status and the sanctity of his message.


    Take your pick. Or as somebody once said “There is no neutral ground”.


    Or is there?


    It is my belief that the line in the sand between these two positions is not as deep as it appears. I intend to erase it. That will obviously take more time than a blog, but Easter Sunday seemed like a good day to start.


   Just to get started, “Easter” isn’t a word Jesus ever heard. It’s derived from an ancient German word for the goddess of Spring, which transitioned over to an old English name for the same goddess and from that to our own use of the term. As opposed to cheapening the Christian idea in any way, this derivation links the Easter celebration with the celebrations of the arrival of spring that occur in virtually all the original human religions, especially those in the northern hemisphere. The annual reemergence of life after the long, dark winter reverberates naturally with the idea of resurrection. This connection also links  Jesus' resurrection with what is sometimes called the “universal drive toward religion in the human species”. This is a concept that has fallen under a lot of fire lately, a fire that’s been fueled by the extremes practiced by current “believers”, but it’s not an idea we can easily do without.


  The idea of human transcendence, that we are meant to be more than our biology, is central to our sense of human identity. It’s all that separates us from wolves. Pretending that the survival value of cooperating within the tribe is the actual, real, scientific reason for human morality goes against the evidence both in human history and in the heart and mind of every human who has ever lived. And what does that have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? Everything. The simple, absolutely historical fact is that if anybody in history didn’t stay dead, it was Jesus of Nazareth. His ethnic brother Mohammed acknowledged him and so does most of the world. Mohammed was more successful during his lifetime and his influence has been equally far reaching and long lasting. There are some bad reasons why both of their ideas have lasted – power games on a large scale played by the same kinds of people who crucified Jesus. Finding and embracing the good reasons why these ideas have lasted may be the best shot we have given the divided world we live in. Some form of Secular Christianity/Islam/Humanism may be our only way out of this mess.
 
   Jesus may save us yet.
 
         
 

1 Comment
Bernard Duval
4/21/2019 03:56:36 pm

Hi Charles, I see you're at it again, trying to make bridges.

So, in keeping with the metaphor of your trying to connect two sides, or trying to argue that the two sides are not as different as it might seem, I'd like you to answer a more basic question: are the two sides connected to any underlying realities, one or the other, or both, or neither? In other words, can't it be that these positions that you lay out are just ephemeral - only ideas, thoughts, with no substance, that they are just creations of the human mind.

So how do you respond to the argument that you are trying to build a bridge between things that don't exist in fact - are only fictions, not provable by any recourse to "reality" outside human thought? How do you know you are not simply wallowing in a swamp of human ideas? How do you respond to the notion that the human mind is a sort of prism that separates the white light of the potentially infinite universe of ideas that human minds are capable of creating into the separate colors of individual and discrete ideas that are all wrong, each and every one, by itself, in that they don't comprehend the whole, but are nevertheless useful, because the whole only yields mystical experience whereas the individual parts serve up meaning, and are operationally and practically useful? We need fictions.

What is common to the two sides that you are attempting to join is that they are simply concepts - illusions - creations of the human mind. Human minds have managed to tease out colors from the white light of being. And then we think that those separate colors point to different underlying realities.

So, Charles, the first challenge is one that the ancient philosophers faced. Is there a reality underlying our ideas? Now the ancients seemed to find a connection between ideas and reality in mathematics, astronomy, and science. Our ideas in these disciplines seem to have anchors in "reality." The fact is there are no such anchors for the notions you are dealing with. Certainly, there are no anchors for items of faith. Of course, I completely agree with you that there is much wisdom in both the world of religion and in secular world thinking. And there's commonality and agreement to be had. But even the most highly prized human conclusion, for example, the central importance of love - is only a notion manufactured by the experience of being human and the needs of human beings. I myself look at the history of the world in its five billion year history and I don't see love, And if I look into the far distant future and see the sun turn into a red giant and incinerate all traces of our existence, I don't see love. So even if we are comforted by saying "God is love." we have to be careful, because that's not what the evidence shows, at least as might pertain to us. The human species, indeed the whole earth, could be crushed by some extraterrestrial body, without any notion of compassion or love playing any part whatsoever.

It seems to me, Charles, that the two sides you are trying join are actually different approaches to human survival. The religious and the secular approaches have commonalities, but they also have weaknesses - each of them. There's nothing wrong with there being conflict between them. In fact, it may be better if their differences are sharpened - as kind of mutations, offering different advantages for survival. It will likely turn out that certain concepts and thoughts and approaches to life will lose out to others that prove themselves more useful. Religion and belief has had a good run, long past the expiration of medieval times. It's strengths and weaknesses are well known. And religions can mutate and be modified, but then there may come a point when it is no longer religion. And that's fine too.

Take care, Charles.

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    Charles Nolan regularly blogs about the ideas expressed in "The Holy Bluff".

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