Time to relax

A video time-out with a salute to the era of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin

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To be unprovable in principle, and self-evidentally so

The Cambridge University cosmologist John D Barrow died late last year, and I have just read something that he wrote that has significance because of its relevancy beyond his own field. His statement shows his deep thought relating to the interface between the search to know God and the scientific enterprise.

His statement came as part of the 2005 Edge.org "big question", which was: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Unlike many others', Barrow's answer was short but pithy. He submitted this statement:

That our universe is infinite in size, finite in age, and just one among many. Not only can I not prove it but I believe that these statements will prove to be unprovable in principle and we will eventually hold that principle to be self-evident.

John D Barrow

Of course, it's the second sentence that holds most significance for those who are dismayed at the adversary nature of science and religion, when science is reductionist on the basis of what is material or physical when it comes to evidence for God, the mind and will (or the soul), and - on the oposing side -  religious fundamentalists (and not all believers) who refuse to recognise well-established scientific findings.  

"Unprovable in principle and ... [holding] that principle to be self-evident." This has echoes of Stephen Jay Gould's principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) of 1997: "Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve."

Simply put Barrow might say, for example, that science will never be able to prove the source or dimensions of the transphysical mind, so it should stick with the facts concerning the material or quantifiable, such as the body and brain, or even the size and number of how many universes there might be around us. 

In fact, Barrow did try to illuminate areas that would be unprovable, and met knockbacks for that effort from rigid colleagues. 

However, Professor Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University, had this to say in his Scientific American tribute to Barrow: "A truly great scientist not only makes significant technical contributions but also reshapes a discipline’s conceptual landscape through a commanding depth and breadth of vision."  And Barrow's vision allowed him to be creative within physics:

The centerpiece of this approach was a remarkable book published in 1986 and co-authored with physicist Frank Tipler entitled The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. It built on the recognition that if the initial state of the universe or the fundamental constants of physics had deviated—in some cases, by just a tiny amount—from the values we observe, the universe would not be suitable for life. The book is a detailed and extensive compilation of such felicitous biofriendly “coincidences,” and it became a canonical reference text for a generation of physicists. It also provoked something of a backlash for flirting with notions of cosmic purpose and straying too close to theology in some people’s eyes. Nevertheless, its style of “anthropic” reasoning subsequently became a familiar part of the theorist’s arsenal, albeit a still contentious one.

From this summary above we see that even in science there are approaches that are shunned simply because they are not in fashion given the prejudices of the elite of the field, without regard to whether the new ideas are intellectually sound or not. Barrow was strong enough to forge ahead:

His adventurous choices of research problems typified Barrow’s intellectual style, which was to challenge the hidden assumptions underpinning cherished mainstream theories. Fundamental problems in physics and cosmology may appear intractable, he reasoned, because we are thinking about them the wrong way. It was a mode of thought that resonated with many colleagues, this writer included, who are drawn to reflect on the deepest questions of existence.

Perhaps Barrow's success arose because of the breadth of his interests. His was not a blinkered existence and that allowed his science to range widely and appreciate insights from beyond the confines of the material world. Davies describes this element in Barrow's life and work:

Barrow’s scholarship and writing extended to art theory, musicology, history, philosophy and religion—a grasp of human culture aptly recognized by an invitation to deliver the prestigious Centenary Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow in 1989 and also by the 2006 Templeton Prize [for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities]. These acknowledgments were in addition to many notable scientific and academic honors, including being made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

To conclude, the Edge question for in 2005 was: What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? Answers were given by 120 scientists and intellectuals. Each expressed the fact that they believed something but could not prove it. That humility as to the limits at any one time of science and technology is welcome. 

[] Those interested in exploring the evidence for the existence of the mind, our transcendental or transphysical nature (our "soul") should avail themselves of the resources at the Magis Center. 

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Morals and markets and the common good Part 2

                                       - New York Times headline April 24, 2021

The New York Times story makes this point: "The coronavirus plunged the world into an economic crisis, sent the U.S. unemployment rate skyrocketing and left millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet. Yet at many of the companies hit hardest by the pandemic, the executives in charge were showered with riches."

My March post on this topic focused on how markets must not be regarded as a morality-free zone. The way the individuals in the business elite plump for self-interest within their select group leaves a stain of corruption on all who are business leaders. I had these deplorable figures in my information:

On Twitter this week the US figures were again highlighted with tweets discussing data that CEO pay growth from 1979-2019 was 1167%, whereas worker pay growth from 1979-2019 was 13.7%. These US figures came out last year in a report by the Economic Policy Institute.  

The Times has this information:

Boeing had a historically bad 2020. Its 737 Max was grounded for most of the year after two deadly crashes, the pandemic decimated its business, and the company announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers and reported a $12 billion loss. Nonetheless, its chief executive, David Calhoun, was rewarded with some $21.1 million in compensation.

Norwegian Cruise Line barely survived the year. With the cruise industry at a standstill, the company lost $4 billion and furloughed 20 percent of its staff. That didn’t stop Norwegian from more than doubling the pay of Frank Del Rio, its chief executive, to $36.4 million.

And at Hilton, where nearly a quarter of the corporate staff were laid off as hotels around the world sat empty and the company lost $720 million, it was a good year for the man in charge. Hilton reported in a securities filing that Chris Nassetta, its chief executive, received compensation worth $55.9 million in 2020. 

 As a final comment, a quotation used in my previous post:

But that behaviour is the logical consequence of the individualism that has been our substitute for morality since the 1960s: the ‘I’ that takes precedence over the ‘We’. How could we reject the claims of traditional morality in every other sphere of life and yet expect them to prevail in the heat of the marketplace?

Read on my Substack website for a new perspective 

Dramatic realism of the resurrection event

From the Jesus Pantocrator icon, about the 6th Century, at St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt

"Look, I'm not a ghost”, Jesus told his followers. “A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you can see that I have." Then he said: “Do you have anything to eat?”, and they gave him a piece of baked fish. It’s this realism that Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles finds so dramatic and significant about the Easter events. Barron’s examination of the account is thorough:

Today, I'm going to harp on something. I'm going to harp on it because a) the Bible harps on it a lot, and b) because our culture often misses it. What I'm going to harp on is the very strangeness of the resurrection.

Maybe it's 10 years ago or longer, when David Cameron was prime minister of Britain, he was giving a little speech on Easter, and he was trying to articulate the significance of Easter. Here's what he said: "The message of Easter is kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility."

Now, I know he was trying to appeal very broadly to anyone that'd be listening. And don't get me wrong, I'm for kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility, too. But my guess is that any decent person would be, believer or nonbeliever. A Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist —anybody would be in favor of these values.

Therefore, that can't be the meaning of Easter. That can't be the meaning of the resurrection.

It's a typical attempt, though, in our contemporary setting to kind of domesticate the resurrection.

What does the resurrection mean? It means that Jesus of Nazareth, who in his public ministry consistently acted and spoke in the very person of God, who was brutally put to death by the Roman authorities, rose bodily from the dead and appeared alive to his disciples — not an abstraction, not a symbol for some moral or spiritual state of affairs, but this bodily resurrection of this particular man from the dead.

I'm going to read a little bit here from this magnificent twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, which is filled with these marvelous accounts of the resurrection. This is right after the Emmaus account, and the Eleven are gathered in the upper room.

And it says, "While they were still speaking about this, he [Jesus] stood in their midst and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.... [But he said,] 'Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.

Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.'"

I submit to you, everybody, that's a very strange text. Just as they were startled and terrified by the appearance of Jesus, I think we should be a little startled and terrified by this message.

Turning it into a bland statement about "Be a nice person" is entirely missing the point of the resurrection.

Let me try to shed some more light on this by setting up a contrast between this extraordinary account and what a first-century Jew might've been thinking about what happens to us after we die. Because this didn't happen in a vacuum — Jews of the first century had ideas, based in the biblical tradition, about what happens to people when they die. These are all on display in the Bible.

First of all, a view —and it was still held by many, still widely held by many Jews today— that death is just the end. That when we die, we go back to dust and that's it. We're dead. It's over.

A second view, also on display in the Bible, is that the dead go to a kind of shadowy underworld. It's called Sheol in the Scriptures. It's a bit like Hades, what you find in Greek and Roman mythology — this kind of unappealing underworld where people are present, they're alive, but not the way they used to be. That's Sheol.

Another view, you can find it in the book of Daniel. This is read, by the way, at almost every Catholic funeral. It says, "The souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them." This idea is that, after we die, the body goes into the earth, but the soul survives.

Now, that's not entirely unlike what some of the Greek philosophers held. So Socrates and Plato would have held some version of that: that our souls escape from the prison of the body, and they live on.

Here's still another view that's on display in the Bible, and in Jesus' time, the Pharisees would have held to this very strongly — namely, that we can hope, at the end of time, all the righteous dead will come back to life in the general resurrection.

Okay. All of those views were on offer. They were held by people in Jesus' time and place.

I want you to notice, what's being described here in Luke 24 — it's not any of that. Certainly not the case that, well, the dead just die and that's it. No, here's Jesus, who died, and he's alive. He's present to them. They're not talking about someone who's gone down to the shadowy realm of Sheol. They're not talking about that.

Remember in the Old Testament when, it's the Witch of Endor calls forth the shade of the prophet Samuel from the realm of Sheol. That's not what's being described here at all,

but someone who stands before them, and he says, "Look, I'm not a ghost. A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you can see that I have."

This is not the view that Jesus died, his body went into the earth, and his soul went to heaven.

That's not being described here at all. This is not a disembodied soul. No, no. Here he is, standing in their midst.

Maybe the closest we've come is to say, what many Jews expected of all the righteous dead at the end of time has happened to this man in the midst of history.

Jesus, alive, body and soul, standing before them. Jesus, who had been killed, brutally put to death, now through the power of the Holy Spirit alive again in their midst.

I love this detail. It's unique to Luke. It says, when they were "incredulous for sheer joy and amazed." By the way, what a beautiful reaction to the Resurrection: incredulous for sheer joy, and they were amazed. He said to them, "Have you got anything here to eat?"

Don't you love the realism of that?

Here's the risen Jesus, wants something to eat, and they give him, it says, “a piece of baked fish," and "he took it and ate it in front of them." May I say again here—and this maybe is for people today who want to domesticate the resurrection, turning it into a bland symbol — this has nothing to do with dreams, and hallucinations, and vague ideas, and velleities [mere wishes without action].

No, no; this man, once dead, now standing before them, with flesh and bones, and eating fish that they gave to him.

Everybody, that's the strangeness, that's the radicality of the resurrection.

Do you believe it, or not? Do you find deep joy in it? That's the question. That's the challenge that Easter gives us year after year.

Okay? Now, once we see that, can we also discern why this matters so much?

And can I suggest just two implications by looking at the first two readings?

First of all, we have this, in the Acts of the Apostles, magnificent speech of St. Peter.

It's a kerygmatic sermon. "Kerygma" means the basic message of the Gospel. So when Peter in the earliest days gets up and tells the people what Christianity is all about, that's the sermon. Now listen to him:

"The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ... has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence.... You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death."

May I suggest, by the way, this is not someone tickling the ears of his listeners. This is not someone trying to ingratiate himself with his audience. No, no; he's laying it out pretty clearly.

St. Peter is seeing the resurrection as an affirmation of Jesus. The one who spoke and acted in the very person of God is revealed not to be a liar or a fraud, but true, righteous.

But more than that, the message of the resurrection is also a judgment on all of us sinners, who, in varying ways and to varying degrees, put him to death.

Again, let this line sink into your heart as I let it sink into mine. "The author of life you put to death."

You see how the resurrection of Jesus —and I don't mean some vague fantasy; I mean, God raising Jesus bodily from the dead —is a judgment on all of those who contributed to his crucifixion.

It's a judgment on the cruelty, and the hatred, and the injustice, and the self-absorption that produced the crucifixion.

See, if the resurrection's a vague symbol, then I am not all that challenged in my sin. Then these words of Peter aren't going to cut me to the heart if the resurrection’s a vague symbol.

But if through the power of the Spirit, God the Father raises Jesus from the dead, and he stands before me, I see in his wounds a judgment on me. An extraordinary implication of the resurrection.

And look how Peter's sermon ends.  "Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away."

Again, this is not ingratiating rhetoric. This is drawing out a very important moral and spiritual implication of the resurrection: that we must come to repentance.

And here's a second implication now, drawn from our second reading from that marvelous First Letter of John. John speaks of an Advocate we now have in heaven. That’s beautiful, isn't it?

What does the resurrection mean?

It means that this Jesus who was a denizen of the earth, this Jesus who walked among us, bodily present among us, has now been raised to a participation in the very life of heaven.

See, biblical religion, everybody, is not like Greek philosophy. It's not a story of let's endeavor to escape from matter to a higher realm. No; it's a story of how heaven and earth are meant to come together.

Remember in the Our Father: "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." That's a prayer that these two realms might meet.

How beautiful that the resurrected Christ eats this piece of fish they gave him. That means that this lowly humanity of ours in Christ has been elevated to the heavenly place.

We have an Advocate — a brother of ours who walked the same earth, breathed the same air. A brother of ours has now been brought into the heavenly space. And in that advocacy, we find extraordinary hope.

Can I suggest, next time you go to Mass, attend to the language of the prayers. They're often this language of heaven and earth meeting, because that's exactly what Jesus means. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"; Jesus' flesh now elevated to heaven. You see how a connection between heaven and earth has been established.

That's what the Resurrection means.

Turn the Resurrection into a vague myth or symbol? Then none of this powerful cosmological truth is expressed.

So, the bottom line: Can I urge you, sometime [especially] during this Easter season, open up your Bibles to Luke chapter 24, a kind of masterpiece within the masterpiece.

Enter into these accounts of the resurrection and realize the full radicality of what is being claimed: Jesus Christ, truly risen from the dead.

See this also at Substack here. 

Do something creative every day to be happy

Another film by Sam Fathallah, who is still making films, both for artistic reasons and for a living. However, I hope the young people we meet are as creative now as they were eight years ago. Enjoy!

 

Harari's list falls short on preparation for next pandemic

London protest against Covid lockdown and masks

Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, offers fatally limited advice to readers of Britain's Financial Times on how to prepare for the next pandemic. 

In his February article "Lessons from a year of Covid", Harari rightly praises the scientific effort that has quickly delivered useful vaccines, though he is scathing at the job done by politicians - "All too often the political wisdom has been missing" because of the habitual feuding in the political arena, and the focus on personal and national interests.

However, what counts is that politicians are society's elected leaders and scientists should leave to them the decision-making in the fight against the pandemic. 

The argument Harari presents as he makes his case also highlights from my point of view how essential it is that science and technology be held up to "human" or "social" scrutiny. He explains why science should not be granted the position of ultimate power in matters of life and death:

The Covid year has exposed an even more important limitation of our scientific and technological power. Science cannot replace politics. When we come to decide on policy, we have to take into account many interests and values, and since there is no scientific way to determine which interests and values are more important, there is no scientific way to decide what we should do.

For example, when deciding whether to impose a lockdown, it is not sufficient to ask: “How many people will fall sick with Covid-19 if we don’t impose the lockdown?”. We should also ask: “How many people will experience depression if we do impose a lockdown? How many people will suffer from bad nutrition? How many will miss school or lose their job? How many will be battered or murdered by their spouses?”

Even if all our data is accurate and reliable, we should always ask: “What do we count? Who decides what to count? How do we evaluate the numbers against each other?” This is a political rather than scientific task. It is politicians who should balance the medical, economic and social considerations and come up with a comprehensive policy.

Similarly, engineers are creating new digital platforms that help us function in lockdown, and new surveillance tools that help us break the chains of infection. But digitalisation and surveillance jeopardise our privacy and open the way for the emergence of unprecedented totalitarian regimes. In 2020, mass surveillance has become both more legitimate and more common. Fighting the epidemic is important, but is it worth destroying our freedom in the process? It is the job of politicians rather than engineers to find the right balance between useful surveillance and dystopian nightmares.

He's right in these matters: "there is no scientific way to decide what we should do"; likewise, without safeguards imposed by society, engineers could could end up "destroying our freedom" and delivering the stuff of "dystopian nightmares".  

This analysis is accurate but the advice arising from it as to preventing or combatting a future pandemic  is anemic. Here is the advice in summary:

First, we need to safeguard our digital infrastructure. It has been our salvation during this pandemic, but it could soon be the source of an even worse disaster. Second, each country should invest more in its public health system. This seems self-evident, but politicians and voters sometimes succeed in ignoring the most obvious lesson. Third, we should establish a powerful global system to monitor and prevent pandemics. 

The reason Harari falls short is that he offers no insight on how to lift the standard of human capacity in what citizens and politicians alike are willing to bear with regard solidarity and self-discipline and altruism - each demanding loving generosity and good will to others - and adherence to the common good rather than to the individualistic hedonism now well embedded in most Western nations, and increasingly to be observed elsewhere, such as in Vietnam, from where this blog originates.  

In other words, Harari fails to attend to the need to develop human capacity, which involves the ability of each person to learn across generations and within each society as to how to reason well, how to respect the dignity of others, and how important it is to serve, if that society is to be sucessful in its goal of ensuring human thriving. 

How to make it more likely that humankind will be ready to face the next pandemic or perhaps technological calamity? Buying Sam Harris's Waking Up app will not get to the heart of the human predicament;  nor by reading Enlightenment Now, where Steven Pinker celebrates the achievements of the human family just at the time where his homeland, the most prominent exemplar of enlightenment's child, individualistic materialism, is coming unstuck through the fraying of the bonds of religion, with the consequences of the destruction of discourse by both left and right, and the deluge of cases of early death and of the feeling of meaninglessness in life, which was Pinker's starting point for his book ("Why should I live?" - see his introduction to Part 1). 

Of course, Harari might expect us all to wait around until we reach the state of homo deus, but that book is as baseless as Pinker's on the big picture, on what is most important about human life. Let Harari build on his success in hitting the target on what needs to be done to avoid future catastrophes and focus on ways to solidify the moral foundation of human life, and on ways to generate the unending eruption of mutual love and respect. Enabling the divine spark to engulf each and every person's heart and mind is the certain way to "determine which interests and values are more important, [since] there is no scientific way to decide what we should do".  

Interested in reading more? Visit my Substack blog and subscribe. 

Eastertime and key facts of the empty tomb

Bishop Robert Barron. CNS photo/courtesy Word on Fire

Some people are attracted to the graves of the famous. Hundreds, even thousands of people go to graves to muse and meditate.

One such person is Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, who serves in the Los Angeles area. He studied in Paris and spent many hours in the cemeteries holding the graves of Chopin, Abelard and Heloise, and even Jim Morrison. In a video talk, Barron says of graves: “They're places of finality. They're places of peace, of contemplation.” However…

Then there's the grave that the Gospel writers are fascinated by. I'm talking about the grave of Jesus, to which three women go early on Easter Sunday morning. They've gone with oils to anoint the body, according to the Jewish custom.

They worried about who would roll the stone back, but I'm sure they were planning there to perform this ritual, and to muse and to ponder, remembering the great things that Jesus had said and done, probably feeling some anger at those that had betrayed him and denied him, probably weeping in their grief.

But they arrive, and to their infinite surprise, they find first, the stone rolled away. Has a grave robber been at work? But their astonishment only increases when, looking inside, they see not the body of Jesus but rather a young man in a white garment, who says to them, "You're looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him."

The young man's message, to put it bluntly, was not that someone had broken into this grave, but rather that someone had broken out of it. What was their response to this shocking news?

And this is the first account we have in Mark's gospel. What's the reaction of these women?

"They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them." Yeah, graves, sure; they're places of quiet contemplation, places to muse, places to think. Then there's this grave, from which these women run in terror.

And thereupon, brothers and sisters, hangs the tale of Easter. Jesus is not a fondly remembered figure from the past. He's not a great spiritual teacher whom we recall with fond contemplation.

We participate in the terror that these women felt as the absolute novelty and shock and surprise of Jesus' resurrection dawned upon them.

What I love about this story is it militates against all attempts to domesticate the resurrection. And there's been a lot of this up and down the Christian centuries, and certainly in our own time.

When I was going through seminary — this is some years ago — these were the kinds of books that we read in the seminary.

"Oh, Jesus’ resurrection; oh, don't read that as something that really happened. Rather, the disciples after the death of their Master, knew that his cause would go on, and so they invented this story of an empty tomb and appearances to symbolize the fact that his cause goes on."

Or this view that was held by a very prominent theologian when I was going through school — after the terrible death of Jesus, the disciples nevertheless felt forgiven, and so they expressed this conviction with the stories of the empty tomb and the appearances.

Come on. I mean, this is impossibly thin gruel, and it does not correspond to the clear sense of shock, novelty, and excitement that runs through every page of the New Testament. Can you really imagine Paul tearing into Corinth with the news that "Hey, the cause of a dead person that I admired goes on."  They would have laughed him out of town.

Can you imagine all the apostles, they go careering around the world to their own deaths — with the message that they felt forgiven? I mean, give me a break.

These attempts to flatten out and domesticate the resurrection are undermined by this fundamental witness of the facticity of the resurrection.

Can I just draw three implications, friends, from the fact of Jesus' resurrection? First of all, it means that Jesus is Lord. You'll find this phrase often in the writings of St. Paul. In his Greek, "Iesous Kyrios," Jesus is Lord. And we might say, "Well, that's a blandly spiritual thing to say." But that was deeply subversive in the first century. Why? Well, because a watchword of that time and place was "Kaisar Kyrios," Caesar's the Lord. He's the one to whom my allegiance is due. He's the one in charge of my life.

How wonderful: the first Christians, in light of the resurrection, they purposely twisted that language. Not Kaisar Kyrios; Iesous Kyrios. Mind you, someone whom Caesar put to death, but whom God raised from the dead, he's the true Lord. He's the one to whom your allegiance is due.

And furthermore, how wonderful that they proclaimed this long before there was anything like an institutional Church, long before there were armies and armies of believers. These are a handful of people who were declaring this deeply subversive message of the lordship of Jesus.

Here's a second implication of the resurrection — again, not as some thin gruel, some vague symbol, but the fact of the resurrection — that Jesus’ claims about himself are now ratified.

Unlike any of the other religious founders, Jesus consistently speaks and acts in the very person of God. "My son, your sins are forgiven."

"Who's this man think he is? Only God can forgive sins."

Right. That's the point. Jesus is speaking and acting in the very person of God. "Oh, you've heard it said in the Torah, but I say…" Well, for a first-century Jew, to claim authority over the Torah, which was the supreme authority — the only one that could possibly do that would be God himself. Uh-huh. "You've got a greater than the temple here," Jesus says, in reference to himself. Again, for a first-century Jew, the temple was the dwelling place of God. Who could possibly say he's greater than the temple, except the one who in fact dwells in the temple?

In fact, this is why Jesus is brought to the cross: this apparent blasphemy, this man claiming to be God.

And then, see, when he died on the cross, even his most ardent followers were convinced that he was a sort of a sad fraud. Think of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Yeah, we thought he was the one, but clearly he's not because there'd be no greater proof possible that someone was not the Messiah of Israel, than his death at the hands of Israel's enemies. Clearly he isn't God. Clearly he was just a deluded figure."

But when he rose from the dead — and I don't mean some vague feeling they had of being forgiven; come on — when he rose from the dead and appeared alive again to them, they knew now he is exactly who he said he was. They knew that Jesus' divinity, his claimed divinity, is ratified. And therefore, we have to give our lives to him.

If he is who he says he is — not one teacher among many, but God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God — what choice do I have? I must give my life to him.

Here's a third and final implication of the Resurrection: that God's love, everybody, is more  powerful than anything that's in the world.

What brought him to his cross? Cruelty and violence and hatred and injustice and stupidity and all forms of human dysfunction. It's on that cross, he bore all of this. The sin of the world came upon him. He went into the muck and the mud of the human condition. In fact, it closed over his head.

But then in the resurrection, when Jesus says "Shalom," and he offers this peace on the far side of all the dysfunction of the world, he shows thereby that God's love is more powerful than any of it.

That's why Paul can say, "I'm certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither height nor depth, nor any other power could ever separate us from the love of God."

He knows it because of the resurrection, because he saw the risen Christ. That's where we find our hope, everybody. That's where we find our salvation. That word just means our healing. What's wounded us? Well, all the darkness and sin of the world; that's what's wounded us.

In the resurrection of Jesus, we find our salvation from all this, we don't take the resurrection as some, "Oh, that's an interesting fact from long ago." Come on; come on. We take it in as the definitive sign of the lordship of Jesus, the definitive sign that he's God from God, Light from Light, the definitive sign that God's love is more powerful than anything in the world.

See also on Substack here