Does the Resurrection Matter?

One thing leads to another.

A tweet on how (some) conservative churches intentionally deceive young people to come to church by using hipster pastiche ended up in a debate on the bodily resurrection.  How this all occurred is anyone's best guess.  For my money,  this is what happens when clarification takes a backseat to "quote-tweets" (which have always perplexed me; I try to avoid them because, both visually and socially, they position a person over another, as if one can gain supremacy in an argument simply by placing one's thought on top of another.  It is like king-of-the-hill for adults with too much time on their hands).

All I can say is that I never thought skinny jeans would lead to a dispute about Jesus' resurrection.

Following conversations on Twitter can be a mind-numbing process (especially when sub-tweets are involved).  It is also time-consuming.  Therefore the details of that particular discussion (or endless train of tweeted non-sequiturs) are not important for what I hope to work out here.  I simply want to pose the question:  Does the resurrection matter?  By this, of course, I mean the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (capitalized from here on to distinguish it from the general resurrection of the dead).

The answer for many requires a simple yes or no.  That is where most people end the discussion.  "The Bible records it. The Creeds affirm it.  I believe it." Or, conversely, "the resurrection is the wishful thinking of uneducated simpletons therefore I reject it out of scientific and rational principle"

Both of those responses irk me.

But the responses of the intelligentsia can also be frustrating.

Some will affirm it because doctrine, particularly the doctrine of the Resurrection, is the basis of belief.  Without good doctrine, you cannot have faith in Jesus Christ.  If adherence to doctrine wanes, the Christian individual and the community of believers will be led astray by the wolf in sheep's clothing, variously believed to be either "Satan," "doubt", "error" or anything which frightens one's delicate and frail belief system/worldview/"orthodoxy".

Others deny it because it "makes no sense."  Analytically, it is full of contradictions.  One must think consistently and clearly and logically to be taken "seriously."  Appeals to "mystery" are a cop out. For that reason, any adherence to the idea that Jesus was bodily resurrected is an act of credulity.

Now, there are a great many who do not fall into either of these camps.  When I delineate between them I am not doing so to demonstrate that there are only two camps or two responses to the Resurrection.

There are many, for instance, who believe in the Resurrection but wish not to bludgeon people into acceptance of it (imatatio Christi, anyone?).  There are also those who find their way to affirming the Resurrection but do so in a way that does not require proving its historicity or bodily nature (this is not to say that the Resurrection was not historical or bodily for such people; it is simply, as an act of God, beyond such categories of discussion).  And then there are those who reject the Resurrection not as a middle-finger to fideism but as an expression of their own wrestling with God along the Jabbok River of the modern world with its social and economic crises.

In the midst of all of this confusion the best traveling companion will be charity.  

Where do I stand in the midst of all these countervailing opinions, frustrations, struggles and perplexities?

Well, I affirm the bodily Resurrection and yet I also know that in considering the nature of an Event like the Resurrection puts me in a place where I have no categories or even capacity to explain how that could be so (I am speaking here about both my faith and the event itself).

This is not an argument from mystery wherein I hide behind the cloak of mystery to cover up my intellectual weaknesses.  Any act of God is a mystery precisely because it is an act of God and not a human act.  My intellectual weaknesses are front and center in my affirmation of the bodily Resurrection.  This is not to deny the power of the Event itself but to humbly admit that when I try to describe it, in a commitment to think logically and clearly about such matters, I find myself in a dead end.

Do I believe Jesus rose from the dead?  Yes.  Was this a real event?  Yes.  Do I admit that working it out logically leads me down the dark alleys of doubt and contradiction?  Yes. Of course.  If the Resurrection is a God-Event, that precludes any human category adequately describing it because, as it is with divine things, it simply belongs to God and no one else.  Perhaps, incidentally, this is one reason Paul chose to focus his language on the Cross/Crucifixion (1 Corinthians 2:2). The Resurrection--while certainly an event in history experienced by humans--is not available to us in the way that economics, fried chicken, or K-pop are.  My affirmation of the Resurrection therefore is a going with the flow of the river more than a testing the water from the safety of the bank kind of affirmation.  I seek not to describe, or force it upon others, but to be taken in and overwhelmed by it.

Does the Resurrection Matter?

The answer, I guess, will depend upon whether you are "down in the river" or standing safely on the bank.