Jim Taylor’s Weblog

Sunday April 4, 2010

Easter story contradicts human experience

By Jim Taylor

Stayin’ alive, sort of
        Five years ago this past week, Terri Schindler Schiavo died after spending 15 years on life support. I use those terms with some caution. There are still people who deny that she had suffered permanent brain death, despite autopsy results, or even that she was on life support.
        Twenty years earlier, in 1985, in a parallel case, Karen Ann Quinlan died. She too was in a “persistent vegetative state,” unable to respond or communicate. But her non-functioning brain kept her alive for nine years after she was taken off mechanical ventilation.
        I cite those cases, not to re-open old controversies, but simply as two examples that even highly politicized court battles and massive intervention by modern technologies cannot yet preclude the inevitable.
        Everyone dies, eventually. Some live longer than others. A woman born in Japan today can expect to live 86 years. In Zimbabwe, she could expect barely 42 years. Canada, with an average life expectancy of 80 years, ranks 11th in the world, according to UN figures.
        But the fact remains – not one of us can expect to avoid dying. And not one of us has known anyone who died, was buried, was dead for two full days, and then returned to life.
        Yet that is the claim made on Easter Sunday.
        And thousands upon thousands of people sing, with apparent conviction, “Jesus Christ is risen today…”

Differing views
        Some modern theologians rationalize away the contradiction of faith with universal experience. They suggest that the resurrection appearances are, in fact, not factual. They were attempts by an unscientific people to explain how, 50 or more years later, the message of Jesus had not died with the man.
        All four gospels offer relatively similar descriptions of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. They diverge no more than, say, eye witness accounts of a motor vehicle accident. But they tell strikingly different stories of his post-death re-appearances.
        Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt Divinity School argues that the gospels provide physical details because, even then, people had doubts.
        “Some people who considered themselves good Christians and followers of Jesus denied a physical resurrection,” she states. “The church eventually decided ‘Yes, it was a physical resurrection.’ But not everybody—even in that first generation—believed it.”
        The apostle Paul had no such doubts. “If Christ is not raised,” he assured the church in Corinth, “our faith is in vain.”
        Conservative theologian N. T. Wright of Westminster Abbey, declares, “The Christian church has, by and large, continued to assert the literal truth of the Resurrection, with a capital R. It is the foundational event. Upon it, all else hangs.”

Three options
        So what is one to do, when faith and experience conflict?
        One option is to reject religion entirely.
        A second is to compartmentalize one’s mind. Beliefs and facts must not interfere with each other – a solution practiced, unfortunately, by Christian and Islamic fundamentalists alike.
        A third option – my preference, as a writer — draws on the literary tradition that English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “suspension of disbelief.”
        He meant that all narratives are artificial. Readers see only abstract marks on paper – or, in our time, images on a screen. They are not real. For a short while, readers must set aside their natural scepticism, to allow themselves to identify with events that exist only in their imaginations.
        I’m not suggesting that the Easter story is fiction. Rather, the test of truth or falsity shifts from the original event to the narrative’s effect on readers.
        Thus even conservative theologian N.T. Wright can say of the Resurrection, “I believe it because—as a Christian—all my life I have found that it makes sense of everything else.”
        By this standard, it doesn’t matter whether the Resurrection is factually accurate. Chariots of Fire did not inspire because every detail was authentic; King Lear is not false because he sprang from Shakespeare’s fertile mind.
        The Easter stories resonate precisely because they do contradict our most basic human experience. They tap into what may be our deepest yearning – a desire to believe that even though death may be inevitable, it is not necessarily the end.<
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn



Joan Mistretta sent some kind words about last week’s column, in which I suggested that Pope Benedict missed the point in his pastoral letters about clerical abuse of children in Ireland.
        “I have been agreeing with you pretty consistently lately and now wonder whether, in the light of Ralph Milton’s retirement, I am trying to assure that you keep going!
        “No, I just agree. I certainly don’t understand those who have said that only those within an institution can criticize the actions of that institution. Think of the wider implications of that. Let every institution ’self correct?’ That is exactly what keeps abuse going.
        “I have just started reading ‘Practicing Catholic’ by James Carroll and recommend it as coming from someone who loves, and has been nourished all his life, by that church and criticizes from that place of love and gratitude. For all of us, I think, our criticism is not just picking on one institution, but a new learning of something we keep forgetting (and that you mentioned) namely that power corrupts. Always. I don’t mean people always give in to the temptation to misuse power, I mean the temptation is always there. We all need to call it out when we see it, in others and in ourselves.”

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About My Books

Over the years, I think I have written (or ghostwritten) about 17 books. Several of them (mercifully) are no longer available from any source. But here’s a listing of those that are still available. The ones marked “WLB”, you can order from Wood Lake Books, either on-line at http://www.woodlakebooks.com, or call Wood Lake Books directly at 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-654-5129 (Pilgrim Press) in the U.S. The ones marked “JT only” are now available only directly from me — as collector’s items, I price them all at $25 Cdn.

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