Sunday, April 20, 2014

On the meaning of Easter after you've fallen

When you no longer consider yourself to automatically be on 'Team God' - to just assume naturally as a matter of course you will be 'saved' - then Easter takes on a wholly different cast.  All of the triumphalism of "He Lives" and "Eternal Life" don't seem so triumphant if the big "He" uses his regained life to torment you forever or if being given eternal life means eternal agony.  For the damned, Easter is an eternal sentence of ultimate cruelty, isn't it?  And that cruelty is conceived, designed, deployed and delivered by our 'Savior' isn't it?  An eternity of agony promised to us by Him in His words coming from His very own lips.

And of course for the presumably 'saved', it is the sentence of a terrorist.  Because who witnessing the depredations of the Triune God against Saul on behalf of David or against Jericho on behalf of the Israelites or against Israel on behalf of Assyria or, and, or, and so on and so forth can be comfortable that God's act in their favor giving them bliss is eternal?  In the span of a couple thousand years our God changed the 'deal' a number of times, always smearing and damning those who didn't get the 'memo' so to speak.  And anyone witnessing God proudly exercising his salvatory randomness 'so no man may boast' cannot feel secure in God's eternal favor.  And to paraphrase Jonathan Edwards, if you live eternally suspended by a proudly random and very angry God over His fiery pit how can you in all honesty say you are in heaven?  Never mind the need to forget all of God's victims that you once knew. And loved.

No, Easter for this God Fearer is a horror.  A promise that the randomness, cruelty and terror that God unleashed when He made this world shall live on even after it ends, probably forever.  Which is why I mourn His rising as much as Christians cheer it.  I would take certain death over His perpetual Holy Terror any day.

No comments:

Post a Comment