Easter – wisdom or foolishness?
Today’s column explores how we can take small steps to prove for ourselves the veracity of the Easter story.
This year Easter fell on what’s called April Fools’ Day in the United States and several other countries. The coincidence of these days got me thinking that some people might feel anyone who believes a man named Jesus literally rose from the dead is a fool of sorts.
The Bible says, “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (I Corinthians 3:19). What is wisdom – the obvious appearance that death is inevitable and irreversible? Or could there be a wisdom Christ Jesus and a few others in history have had that overcame death?
Common science describes human life as made of material elements that finally die. Yet it’s becoming more accepted in physics today that consciousness, rather than matter, may be the foundational reality.
Christian Science accepts that premise, not just intellectually but as something that can be proved by degrees in daily life. It takes the Bible accounts of Jesus’ power to heal disease and injury and even raise people from death as evidence that he understood each life as the expression of an indestructible Principle called God. His advanced consciousness of life as wholly spiritual could restore what we observe as physical life.
It’s a big claim to say that even one person actually rose from the dead, but one way to think of it as not just a legend is to begin taking small steps ourselves toward proving it. For example, it’s possible to rise from the death of joy regarding something we’re missing by gaining the consciousness that happiness isn’t in something physical but is always present if we live to give it to others. Many people have risen from the death of hope and have overcome fear or shame or sickness through the consciousness that they are loved by the perfect Love that gives life.
Easter is a celebration of healing possibilities for those who accept that consciousness, rather than physicality, constitutes life. That’s not foolishness. It’s the promise of expanding life for everyone, one risen thought at a time.
A version of this article aired on the March 29, 2018, Christian Science Daily Lift podcast.