roderic@vicom.com (Roderic Taylor) (03/19/90)
I originally posted the following article in talk.religion.misc. A kind person mentioned that this newsgroup would also be appropriate: Christ's suffering moves me. In a previous article, I wrote about how my father suffered with cancer for a long time, then died; and how this led to the end of my own belief in God. Because Christianity does not downplay suffering, or deny it, or minimize it, because it considers suffering so serious that even God's anointed suffered, I have to take Christianity seriously. Now what does Christ's resurrection mean in this context? It seems to undermine the seriousness of Christ's pain. This is not supposed to be the case; the gospels transmit the seriousness of his suffering, even to the point of recounting his prayers that he might be delivered from it. But it undermines his suffering for me. Human beings suffer and die, and do not then rise again. Yet the resurrection of Christ is central to Christianity. I do not know how to take it; I do not know what it means. Of course some Christians interpret it literally to mean that Christ triumphed over death by being resurrected, and that those who believe in him will triumph similarly; some of these Christians even talk at length what it will be like to live with a perfect resurrected body in a perfect Christ ruled world. But I know there are Christians on this net who do not necesarily believe in an afterlife, and who certainly don't find such a belief central to their faith. To them I would ask, is the resurrection important to you? What is its signficance? What does it mean to you? --Roderic T
gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) (09/20/90)
Howard Steel writes: ---------------------------------------- I look at the resurrection story and what has grown from it. I don't need a verification of that event to justify the changes that have occured as a result of the story. In fact I don't need the event itself any longer, I just listen to the message. >You would be deriving >inspiration from a lie, or from wishful thinking. Is that what you want to >base your life on? No I would be deriving inspiration from a story and the message it includes. > If the the resurrection story is just that -- a story -- >then the only "teaching" I would get out of it is either that (1) there is no >God, (2) He is aloof and doesn't care about us, or (3) He hasn't gotten around >to helping us out of our mess because he wants us to do it. Your points 1 and 2 do not follow from the premise. Neither does point 3, but I'm sure he would want us to work our way out of our mess, but he has provided help. >In any case, your Christianity, which does not need the validity of the >resurrection story, is something quite different from New Testament >Christianity. I think not. I simply say that the event itself is not as important as what we have learned from the story of it. If Christianity had not developed at all, the event would not even exist in your life; it is the truth of the message underlying it that has kept it alive all these centuries. The message in my mundane little story of the beggar is no less real because it is a fable, than the ressurection story's message would be if it were a fable. ---------------------------------------- The question, I guess, is what the ``message of the resurrection'' is. If it never happened, you would get a different message out of it than if it actually happened. (When you said that your beggar story never happened, it completely changed the significance of the story!) The message of the resurrection, if it happened, is that Death has been conquered. The message of the resurrection, if it didn't happen, is that it would be nice if Death were conquered, and thinking about Death being conquered makes it easier to think about Death, and therefore makes life a little more pleasant. For me, being a Christian involves certain difficulties. If the resurrection didn't happen, I'd kind of like to know about it, since it might cause me to reassess my view of the value of submitting myself to these difficulties. If death has not been conquered, then I am not a being destined for eternity, and I should live life accordingly. More like the beer commercial--``You only go around once in life, so you have to grab for all the gusto you can get.'' I might also comment that the resurrection story was not perpetuated by people who didn't think it had happened, but liked the sound of it. That is a lot more like the story of Balder. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com ``Man was meant to lead with his chin. He is only worth knowing with his guard down, his head up, and his heart rampant on his sleeve.'' -- Robert Farrar Capon