Love Underlined

"It is LOVE that believes in the Resurrection." Wittgenstein

I am struck as I write this how over complicated I like to make things, with how much depth I like to think about the concept of faith and the purpose of the Church. I think it is vital that we do this. But I am aware right now how simple the truth of Christianity is.

All of the theology that evolves out of the last two thousand years is so vast that I can't even dream of getting my head around it. The number of concepts even in Paul's writings in the New Testament might take me the rest of my life to try and comprehend fully. But it's not the point. I don't mean that it isn't important- but it isn't necessary to the basic truth of Christianity.

The beauty of the Christian Church is that there is no division between a world renown Biology specialist and a simple, uneducated Christian. They are both children of God, and are both welcomed into his Church. Rich, poor, intelligent, stupid, young, old, wrong, right. The reason that this is possible is because the truth of Christianity is overwhelmingly simple. And it is this: faith, and love.

I think of two of Jesus' earliest followers: Thomas and Peter. They represent these concepts of faith and love perfectly. When confronted with a resurrected Jesus their responses are very different. Thomas, like any good historian, philosopher or scientist wants evidence. He demands to see the holes and the marks of the crucifixion. And Jesus' grants him his request. Thomas is confronted with the evidence of the resurrection and he has faith.

While we lack what was available to Thomas today, we are hardly lacking in evidence. We are left to explain how the Christian Church evolved out of the life of this man Jesus who was recorded in history. We are left with four independent accounts of his life, death and resurrection which require a response. They are not easy to dismiss as works of fiction or wishful thinking. They require faith. Like Thomas; when presented with the resurrected Jesus, we have a choice.

But as I think about faith more and more, I am dissatisfied to think about it as a purely objective belief in a historical proposition. Faith in Jesus unlike my belief that Dinosaurs existed requires a complete change in my being. If true, then it requires an upheaval of my entire world view. It is Peter's response to the resurrection that typifies this.

After the death of Jesus, it is recorded that Peter denies Jesus three times. The person that he devoted himself so fully to over the past three years he totally rejects. When he meets Jesus again, risen from the dead, Jesus' first response is not one of evidence but a question: "Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me?". Peter is confronted with the resurrected person of Jesus on a deeply personal level.

 And I believe that today the person of Christ asks the same question: "Do you love me?". The basic truth of Christianity is that it requires not only faith, not only a belief in an event, but a total submission to it. It is not a belief based on feeling or subjectivity, but neither is it one based on hard cold fact- it must go beyond that. It is a leap beyond the simple belief in the resurrection. "Do you love me?" is a world shattering, life changing question. It is a question I am still trying to answer. But it is breathtakingly simple.

My Body is a Cage

Culture seems to have a strange conception of the Christian afterlife. You only need to look at films, cartoons, TV programs and books to see that there is a concept of 'going to heaven'- of escaping to an ethereal soul float; a disembodied, spiritual, vague and unscientific existence. I think of His Dark Materials, the Phillip Pullman novels in which millions of souls are released from a torturous existence, to be released into the nirvana of nature. I think of the Simpsons with its comic depictions of God and his long white beard, sitting on a big fluffy cloud, of souls floating out of bodies. You don't need to look far to find a picture of 'heaven'. Ask any person on the street, in gregs, in HMV, in Starbucks- they will tell you about souls and clouds and maybe harps. 

Somehow this notion of 'heaven' has slipped into Christian culture. People seem to be under the impression that the Christian belief is that I will die, my soul will float out and I will live with God in a spiritual heaven. And for years that's what I believed. And it irritated me. Even worse, I didn't really believe it. It sounds like a fairy tale, like a pre-enlightened fantasy. Christian culture seems to be at times vague, and times bordering on confused on what 'heaven' consists of at all.   

But it's pretty clear from what it says in the Bible that the Christian hope is one of resurrection. I was reading only this morning from Job: 

"After my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!" 

In my flesh I will see God. I really don't know in what other sense I could see God. I don't really know in what other sense I could be anything at all. And it's littered all over the Bible. You only need to read 1 Corinthians 15, Paul goes on a similar rant about resurrection and how important it is. I know it sounds strange, but I get really riled up about this. It influences how we live out faith; it's important that we think through what it is we have hope in.

 But people don't really get it sometimes. On one side there are the people who think 'surely all Christians believe in the resurrection of the body'- it's obvious. The other side don't really know; and even more dangerously, they don't think it matters very much. Only last week I met up with a friend who would call himself a Christian. He didn't really understand what happens when we die. He wasn't really sure what he believed. But he'd never really heard about physical resurrection. I have spoken to friends of mine who have been Christians for 10 years who don't really know what they think. And it makes me so angry, because it's so vital, so central to what Christianity is about. Even in the most basic doctrine of beliefs we have, the apostles creed claims: 

"I believe in the resurrection of the body"

 I think it's pretty important we know what the hope is that we claim. It impacts how we share faith, it impacts how we live it out, and it matters deeply. I resent the fact that we have embraced a culture of 'death' being a going into the next room, a natural part of life, just a little harmless stage in human existence. No! Christianity believes that death is conquered. But it is conquered because it needs conquering. Death is painful. I think about the loss of my Grandmother on my family and what pain that causes us, what a gap that leaves. Death is awful, it is horrendous, it is totally opposed to life and to hope.

Resurrection is a pretty clear word- it is about rising from the dead. It is about conquering death. Rising from the dead reverses an act of utter evil. If death is only an escaping of this world, of this body, then it is not all that bad and it totally nullifies the cross.

 For me, this realization was enormously significant. As far as I could gather, my identity was so intricately tied into my physicality; my personality was as much about how I looked as how I acted. And what I thought were the beliefs of Christianity seemed so opposed to that. The truth is that we are very physical beings- the Bible is very clear about that. We are dust beings not floaty floaty spirits. We need to cling onto this more than ever in an age of ever increasing scepticism towards Christianity. It might be that the concept of resurrection is just as laughable. But personally, I found the truth of resurrection transformed my faith, my view of hope, my view of death. We need clarity in how we speak, how we communicate, how we preach and in our own minds.

"But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised."