Dear N,
The only article I could find on finding Jesus’ tomb was the one put out by BBC yesterday. I quite agree with you about it being a “publicity stunt, or a case of mistaken identity,“ probably both. But, on the whole I think the cause of such claims runs deeper. Last years blockbuster, “The Da Vinci Code,” simply demonstrates that many people are inclined to believe just about anything even if it is fabricated and has no factual evidence to back it up. I was amazed to watch a news anchor on the conservative Fox News Broadcast speak to a fellow commentator on the film as though it was historically possible even though the book was clearly a work of fiction. People confuse fact and fiction all of the time. Christians accuse unbelievers of doing this and Christians themselves are accused of it by those who do not accept the claims of Christ.
The whole of the matter centers of course, on what does one do with the claims of Jesus. The problem isn’t what to do with the moral teachings and life of Christ but how to reconcile them to His central claim to be God in human flesh. If one accepts that claim, then believing the resurrection is only logical. If you remember our discussion in class about C. S. Lewis’s tri-examination of Christ as either, Lord, liar or lunatic. If one is not willing to accept Lewis’s reasoning, the only other possible way of viewing Christ’s claim is that someone might say that it was not Christ who made these claims but his disciples.
I would answer someone by telling them that a Christian’s faith in Christ is also a faith in the character of the men and women who witnessed His resurrection. In this way God has tied us to those first disciples. I think God finds great pleasure in joining people to each other. We are given good reason to believe the witness of those who physically saw and touched Jesus after His resurrection. After all, these are not the kind of people who would lie about something like this. They did not financially profit by claiming to have witnessed the resurrection. Just the opposite in fact. History bears out that these people suffered and sometimes greatly so for declaring what they had seen. It seems inconsistent to view these men as liars, fabricating what would be the greatest lie in history when their manner of living was centered around all that we commonly accept as moral and good. They were not only committed to telling the truth but to unselfishly living for the well being of others. It would be truthful to say that they were not the kind of people who would deliberately deceive. The disciples also do not write like delusional fanatics. It seems to me that the integrity of their godly character demonstrated in loving even sacrificial actions, strengthens the witness of their words. When all is said and done, the disciples who claimed to have witnessed the miracle of Christ were trustworthy people. Why would we not believe them? When one considers the character of what they taught, and the moral make up of their lives, it makes blessed good sense to believe them.
I think that the faith of most is challenged more by conflicting desires than by reason. I would dare say that if you or I saw Jesus in the flesh we would still yield to our sinful desires. It is not so much faith verses reason as it is faith verses lust. People do not want to believe the claims of Christ because our hearts are inclined toward living under our own rule, rather than God’s. We naturally seek to justify, even if only by some fabrication, our self-centered existence. It is this self-centeredness that He has come to change. That He is still doing it everyday, is one of the evidences that He is in truth a resurrected Savior.
Read again these words as though reading them for the first time. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” 1Jo1
Just me trying to be honest with God.
