The annual non-sequitur of Easter (Or is God’s “gift” based on a warped version of the moral accounting metaphor?).

Imagine that a neighbor walks up today and tells you that he really cares about you.   In fact, he loves you like a daughter/son and he wants to show his love.  You might be delighted to hear such an expression of affection. 

Then imagine that he tells you that he wants to prove to you that he cares for you.  He wants to prove it in a way that you will never doubt the depth of his caring.  

You would probably be thinking that he’s going to do something nice.  Maybe he will give a big donation to charity in your name.  Or maybe he will go buy you something nice, or take you to dinner at a good restaurant.  But then he surprises you.

He reminds you that he has an adult son named Bill (which you knew, because you know Bill).  He then tells you that he is going to let a mob of goons torture and murder Bill in a bloody spectacle, for you!

You are aghast, but he continues on.

He tells you that he is going to let that mob drive large nails through Bill’s hands and feet, for you, to prove that he cares about you.   For a grand finale, he is going to allow this sadistic crowd to jab a spear through Bill’s side, to make sure that every drop of blood has been drained from Bill’s body.

It would be patently obvious to you that decent people don’t “show their love” by …

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It never occurred to me to literally nail myself to a cross.

When I saw this article at MSNBC, I thought it was a joke.   But no, it was no joke.  Check out the photo.   Apparently, 30 men and one woman residing in the Philippines actually had themselves nailed to crosses.  They went through the Good Friday rites in three villages in…

Continue ReadingIt never occurred to me to literally nail myself to a cross.

A Martian anthropologist tries to understand Easter.

I enjoy chatting with Martian anthropologists.  They visit Earth without preconceptions and they ask obvious questions. 

Recently, I encountered a Martian anthropologist who was struggling to understand what Easter was all about.    I tried to explain it in simple terms.  I first tried to tell the Martian Anthropologist (I think it was a “she,” so I’ll use the feminine pronoun) about Good Friday. I told her that a magic fellow named Jesus dies every year on Good Friday and the Christians get all glum, even though He doesn’t really die every year, and we’re not entirely sure that there was a Jesus or that he was truly magic.

I paused, then explained further.  I told her that Catholics are my favorite kind of Christians because I was raised Catholic and because they strive so hard to not eat meat on Good Friday.  She asked why they didn’t eat meat and I said I didn’t know, especially since they eat fish and fish seems to be meat.  At church, it gets even stranger, I explained.  Catholics eat bread that they claim was “transubstantiated” into the actual body of Jesus (even though it still looks and tastes like bread.  The ironic twist is that this bread is supposedly meat and the Catholics eat it on Good Friday, even though they promise not to eat meat on Good Friday. 

Then, every year on Easter Sunday Jesus is said to rise from the dead and save us, even though we weren’t the one’s …

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Continue ReadingA Martian anthropologist tries to understand Easter.