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This coming weekend, the world’s 2.5 billion Christians will celebrate — emphasis on “celebrate” — the torture, execution and resurrection of an obscure Jewish carpenter.
Others will simply note in passing the execution of that same man.
Those are really the only two choices that people have. Either Yeshua, son of Yusef, (and better known as Jesus) was God, in which case his torture, execution and resurrection are central to the lives of everyone on the planet, or he was a carpenter and an itinerant Jewish preacher who was probably a madman and whose life and death meant nothing.
While both seem incredibly improbable, the second option — that he was, essentially, no one — may be as difficult to explain and believe as the first.
If you believe that he was just another Jew executed by the Romans, you’re left with the uncomfortable fact that what he did and what he taught touches almost everything we do, say, and see on this planet. His life, teachings and example have driven humanity for 2,000 years.
Even now, at this desiccated spiritual and intellectual moment, the religion he created remains the most powerful force for good in the world. Most of what we consider Western civilization — art, music, sculpture, literature — was built or created by his followers. Most of the institutions that have survived for any length of time — universities, hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, the judicial system — were invented or reinvented in their current form by his followers.
Most of what we aspire and appeal to every day — fairness, charity, individual freedom, the proper relationship between rulers and ruled, etc. — is derived directly from what he taught.
That’s not bad for someone who never published a thing, never left his small Roman province on the edge of the Mediterranean, never had children, and died a pauper at the age of 33. Most of his immediate associates were probably illiterate. Only one or two could manage a bit of spoken Latin or Greek, the dominant languages of commerce and statecraft, for 500 years after the first Good Friday.
It is almost easier to believe that the man tortured and executed on a hillside outside of Jerusalem was God and did, in fact, rise from the dead.
The story of the execution and subsequent resurrection has all the tragic themes that have followed humans throughout the ages. The corrupt official — the Roman governor in this instance — asks mockingly, “quid est veritas?” right before sentencing a man he knows is innocent to death.
The awesome hypocrisy of the tribal elites of an occupied nation who seal the prisoner’s fate by asserting that they “have no king but Caesar.” The fickleness and the brutality of the mob. The treachery of a friend. The loneliness of the accused. The love and desperation of a mother.
The story also contains great joy. The resilience of truth. The ultimate victory of good over evil. The possibility — for all of us sinners and perhaps especially for those who do not yet believe — of redemption.
Seven hundred years before Jesus appeared on Earth, the great prophet Isaiah wrote about the carpenter and his terrible moment on Good Friday: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. But he has borne our griefs, and he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him.”
The hope that we feel on Christmas bears full fruit on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The certain knowledge that God loves us. That he wants us to be happy, to live lives of meaning and beauty. That we are important. That whatever travails we endure are temporary. The cross on Friday and the rolled-away stone on Sunday are testaments to all of that.
This weekend, think carefully about which of the two options we face is most likely to be true and have a happy and reverent Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Reporting from The Washington Times.
