Happy Easter!

 

Today has dawned on the Kanto Plain as Easter day should have dawned in any country-clear, bright, not a cloud in the sky. All in all a glorious day!

Despite what my posts may convey or fail to convey, I do believe in God, his Son Jesus and the miracle of the resurrection. More probably because no one has given me a palpable reason NOT to believe it. Unlike Mr Hitchens, I cannot go into that dark place that says there is no God. To believe that way is to make life itself so totally futile-and pointless. I just cannot accept that.  If the universe is so ordered that it allows death and suffering-then there has to be something beyond this mortal existence.

At the same time, I do think that Mr Hitchens book captured well, that anger that any believer has to get past in order to be comfortable in his faith-namely that if the Deity is all powerful and loves us all why then does He allow such unfair and indiscriminate suffering to go on and on and on? I call that the Job paradox, and I am in agreement with those who say that it is the one area that all religions, the monotheistic religions in particular, do a poor job of explaining. Because there is a corollary: If God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to save us from our sins-then it means he also so ordered the laws of the universe to unfairly require the sacrifice of a sinless being to atone for those sins. Which when viewed from a certain  viewpoint can be seen as just more than a little mean-and quite unfair-to us and to His Son. That’s the point Christopher Hitchens makes. Where he and I part company is that just being angry at the Deity for being mean and unfair,  does not necessarily mean that He does not exist.  It just means that you do not like his ordering of the universe, is all.  Problem is, He is still God……and we are not.

Now that said,  I would also submit that we would all be a lot better off if He were more of an interventionist Being and would intervene to put a stop to some or most of mankind’s silliness and the disease and destruction that continues to go on today over 2000 years after His Son’s  birth. Free will and infinite patience so as to allow all to come to Him and all that-ok it makes sense as far as it goes-but it does not solve the fundamental problem. Mankind needs a better physical and mortal existence if you please. That again is an area where all three of the monotheistic religions do a poor job of conveying God’s reasons and intentions. Islam does the worst, ” Because I said so! Now get on or I’ll punish you some more!”, Then Christianity, ” Because men need time to accept the free gift of salvation, and I’m going to bend over backwards to give it to them“. In my mind Judaism probably does the best, “ Stop worrying about the timing of the redemption and just accept that God offers hope and redemption-someday.” I’ve always thought that Jews had the best approach to spirituality-even if I do not quite follow them on their slavish insistence on the law. Most Jews I have observed echo my sentiments and that is why most Israelis, for example,  are not observant. But they still take pride in what they are. They treat the Torah and the Talmud in more of an allegorical way. Which is useful because when viewed in that sense, the Bible makes a lot of sense and provides useful instruction to mankind how to move forward in a loving and positive way. I cannot follow the fundamentalists into the road of the Bible as literally inerrant.  Sorry Reverend Hagee and Mr Lindsay-the EU is not the beast with 10 horns and China is not the great Magog. Now as for 2012 and end of the Aztec calendar? Well I’ll just let smarter men than me fight it out.

I’ve struggled for a while to set down in writing my thoughts on Hitchen’s book and I’ve struggled to condense my thoughts in writing this post. I should be at mass this morning. Both the S.O. and I overslept, and for her the Mass is nothing but a quaint ritual that she does not understand. By the way,  if you want to have your eyes opened-try having to explain Easter to someone who does not know what it is about-the S.O. asked me this week if Americans knew that Easter was about more than bunnies and eggs-I did not have a good answer. I like to think that most Americans do. At least I hope they do.

The S.O. has a Celtic Woman CD on the player. “You raise me up” is playing as I type this. Appropriate perhaps. Beautiful song to be sure.

For me, at home or in the pew, Easter will remain about hope. Hope for a better future here in the physical world and down stream in the world that is to come. (For me, heaven would be an immortal existence in this world, young in body with the wiser knowledge of the older man-but that’s for another post). Despite all of the theological inconsistencies laid out above (and you can call off the evangelical dogs-these are my thoughts to bear), I do know this: “Say the word Lord, and I shall be healed.”

Happy Easter!