"Happy" and "Easter" together - Really?
A ONE MINUTE READ
I’m just not feeling the joy here. The narrative that I haven’t latched onto is that God up there in Heaven hatched a scheme to keep us from going to Hell down there (imagine me gesticulating with an angry finger), by sending his only son to earth to save us.
Now, the best way that God, the creator of the universe, could think of to accomplish this feat was as follows. He would have his “only begotten son,” a most altruistic, loving and compassionate human, tortured over many hours and then die . . . SO that that son could be brought back to life a couple days later, so that we could be brought back to life when we die!
And, as is so often the case, there’s a caveat! There’s a requirement that we profess a belief in that entire scheme. We have to buy into the fact that the “almighty creator” couldn’t come up with a better idea.
I may not be alone here - I just can’t buy the concept of someone offering the life of another as a sacrifice for anything. When you offer up your own life, that would be a worthy sacrifice. But word is that God gave His son up for us.
Maybe I’m way off base here, but the thrust of the New Testament of the Bible as I see it was the depiction of how a most honorable human could live, even in the most trying of times. I fully get that such a man could be tortured to death because as I suggested in my last post, we humans are really uncomfortable being compared to perfection. That would be an intimidating bar especially for narcissistic rulers.
In addition, we as a human race, lose little sleep over the infliction of suffering on others. Is the starvation of hundreds of children to death in Gaza any more horrific than breaking the bones and stabbing someone on a cross? Little has changed and little will - until we make fundamental and I dare say sacrificial changes ourselves.
If there’s anything to actually celebrate on Easter, it’s the suggestion that there just might be life after death. I have no idea how much of the story happened as depicted in the New Testament of the Bible. But the concept of redemption, mercy and new life does bring a smile to my face.
Happy Easter you all !
I love your logic and thinking for yourself. For me, I love being a Unitarian because we have questions, not answers so much. This partial sonnet of Wordsworth’s kind-of summarizes what I feel, that being in tune with nature is embracing all creation.
“This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less
forlorn
…”
If there is life after death, then there is no death, just a continuous life.