Explaining Easter: Things to Reflect Upon during Holy Week.

As I write these words, the Christian world rests within the bosom of Holy Week, commencing recently with Palm Sunday and culminating on Easter Sunday, Christianity’s holiest day of the year. It is quite difficult, however, to explain the omnipresence of this day for people who do not adhere to any form of religious belief – particularly when posting upon an exclusively career-centric site – but I feel compelled to offer a few thoughts regarding this particularly important day nonetheless. Especially since ~68.2% of the U.S. population alone professes to be Christian. This means that nearly seven out of every ten workers, clients, customers, managers, etc. affiliated with your organization are Christian to varying degrees of participation. Accordingly, regardless of your personal beliefs, you must understand the significance of this week and, especially, its foundational apex.

So what, precisely, does Easter entail? For that, we must first reflect upon what Christianity involves.

To begin, I shall pull two pertinent verses from the Holy Bible (Christianity’s final depository on direct revelations from God), specifically the Gospel of John (The New American Bible edition):

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.” (NAB 1:1-3)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

With these passages in mind, we can now extrapolate a very brief summation of Christian thought. First of all, Christians believe within a singular God that consists of three Persons within the blessed Trinity. That most Muslims and atheists (or agnostics), say, cannot comprehend this leads to accusations of worshipping multiple gods and this comes primarily from ignorance of what Christians duly profess. Consider myself, for example. I write these words (I am therefore the author) in the hopes that I may be able to explain Easter (I therefore offer myself as a teacher), and, perhaps, these words will instill a sense of reflection upon others long after Easter ends for the year (future readings of my words may impart influence upon readers in the future). Yet, I am only one human being. In a similar manner, for Christians, God represents the Author of the universe (Father), the Teacher of all that we need to know in order to gain ever lasting salvation (Son) and remains with us as Influencer to instill upon us a sense of energy to endure this cruel earthly world of ours (the Holy Spirit). Three persons – One God, Who, as the first passage above states, created everything that we can come to know and appreciate (whether or not we can touch, smell, or think about it). God, for true Christians, created the entire Universe, from the smallest subatomic particle on through the most massive galactic supercluster. Through what mechanisms He chose to do so matter very little.

Secondly, Christians believe that this omnipresent God so loved his human creatures (by the way, spirits – angels and demons, that is – remain creatures too; they are not supernatural beings), that He wanted to become one of us. This remains extraordinary and requires a bit of reflection upon our part. In most religious faiths, people try to become gods by elevating him or herself to superiority over fellow human beings. In Christianity, God humbled Himself to our level, even to the point of being born within a stable largely unfit for beasts of burden. Again, think about this. The Creator of the entire universe appearing as an infant in a manger. Talk about being humble! So why, you may ask, did He allow Himself to become so vulnerable, so susceptible to all the horrors that humans afflict upon one another? Perhaps to show that He was willing to forgive us for abandoning Him throughout the course of human history. And herein rests the primary lesson of Easter – God suffered Himself through every human depravity so that we might eventually realize that our concerns remain so petty in comparison as to laugh about.

This omnipresent God came to earth as fully human (which explains the Christian dogma of His Mother, Mary, being truly the Mother of God), bore a stepfather, was born under sentence of death from King Herod, fled to Egypt, lost from His parents for three days, grew up within a blue collar trade, endured accusations of insanity and assaults from amongst His neighbors, abandoned by His friends, betrayed by a trusted associate, tried within a kangaroo court, and then suffered the most horrifying method of death ever invented by man. And you think that you have a difficult life…

Now, you ask, just why did God suffer Himself through all these human absurdities when He could have simply willed us into submission? In a word: Easter.

Ever since there were humans, we have been continuously assaulted by a tireless, relentless, adversary bearing extraordinary intelligence and unimaginable guile. The deception unleashed upon Adam and Eve (imagine, if you will, two innocent human beings that had never heretofore experienced vice or hatred – talk about soft targets!) ushered in Original Sin, disobedience towards God’s Will. Every second of our lives we are under attack from an adversary that knows not of being tired, knows not of mercy, knows not of surrender, and yet knows every one of your thoughts, desires, fears, and anxieties. And he is not alone, for he is legion.

And what did God do when His human creatures were under dire threat?  He did what any good leader would do; God decided to rush into the danger zone to save us from a fate worse than death. God could have chosen to dwell upon legislative rules and obligations, namely adherence to the Mosaic Ten Commandments. Or He could have permitted us to be sacrificed to the “illegal immigration” of demonic insurgency. Perhaps He could have simply allowed us to continue our sinful ways and pardoned us under “progressive” liberalism (Hey, if it feels good just do it!). No, God wants to leave no fallen comrade behind.

Regardless, God’s love is not our love. Inasmuch as Gandhi stated that he would have likely become Christian if he ever found one, we would love one another if we only found what true, unadulterated Christian love was. Two thousand years ago, the world could not even begin to consider what this statement means. The sick were abandoned alongside the road. The uneducated sold into slavery. The poor thrown into prison. The youth served as sexual toys by the emperors, some even thrown off cliffs when no longer needed. People were not just killed, they were fully dehumanized. So God effectively said, “Okay, you bastards. Try that on me when I become human!” And they did.

Big government bureaucrats and other political elitists decided that God was far too revolutionary for the common good and thrust Christ into their kangaroo court, leveled false accusations against Him, and decided that He had to die to save their own way of life. It was either give up their taxes, their prestige, and their manhandle on religion for this quaint notion that everyone was created equal, or silence this troublemaking deplorable permanently. So they convicted Him for crimes against the state. They convicted Him for speaking freely within the public square. They convicted Him for the horrendous thought that perhaps, just perhaps, the ruling class was wrong about life, liberty, and the pursuit of eternal joy and happiness. Oh, but this simple conviction could not be paroled.

They decided to strip their “criminal” naked, mocked Him, and literally whipped the skin off His bones. They crowned Him with a wreath of thorns, driving perhaps three-inch spikes into His skull. Then they beat Him until He could barely carry the log upon his shoulders; a tree destined to hang His body from. Ungraciously, they drove huge nails through His wrist and ankles and hurled His presence upon a crossbeam itself unceremoniously fixed against a trunk. After all this torture and insult, after all their spitting upon and slapping His face, for all their incredulous accusations of criminality, when God Incarnate died, they chose to lock His tomb away so that no one could enter and, thus, silence this “rebel” for all of eternity. But they said very little about anyone leaving the guarded tomb.

Truth cannot be silenced by reason. Truth cannot be extinguished by force. Truth cannot be legislated into extinction. And, my friends, truth cannot be denied by ignorance. When all human efforts were made to silence the Truth and drive it into a tomb, God proved that our way was not necessarily His Way and herein lies the explanation for Easter. Try as we might, we cannot ever explain that which we cannot see, touch, hear, and witness firsthand. Even today, a great many of us are quite willing to believe the tales and opinions of others simply to hold onto a particular belief or agenda. God understands this, which is why He came to earth two thousand years ago. Not to ridicule us. Not to condemn us. Not even to divide us. If we were the only sinner in all of human history, He would have still placed His life on the line in order to save us from eternal death. Easter fundamentally explained….

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R.J. Godlewski (GOD LESS KEY) is the former executive manager of a threat resolution services company and served as the president of his own security company. He is an alumnus of American Military University, holding an M.A. in Military Studies, Asymmetrical Warfare concentration and a B.A. in Intelligence Studies, Terrorism Studies concentration (with minor degree in Area Studies -- Middle East), both earned with academic honors. He further holds graduate and undergraduate certificates in Security Management and Explosive Ordnance Disposal, respectively. Mr. Godlewski is a veteran of both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Navy Reserve. He remains devoted to protecting the dignity and integrity of innocent human life, wherever and whenever it may be placed in jeopardy and by whatever means may be necessary and employs the breadth of his knowledge, experiences, and assets to achieve this mission. He is the author of Of What Price, Heaven?: Encountering God Within a Highly Secularized Society and Explaining God: Ten Chapters to Introduce the Almighty to the Uninitiated. “God loans us life, let us not take it away…” Image: ? Antonio Gravante - Fotolia.com