For Christians, there can be no other day in the year that is more genuinely worthy of a SPECIAL day of celebration than Easter.

No one’s birthday … or Christmas … or July 4th … or Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day or any other day … NO day is more WORTHY OF CELEBRATION than Easter. NONE.

Of course, we know that EVERY day is special in it’s own snowflakey way … it is best to live in the NOW, or possibly just slightly erring on the future side of now, in anticipation of the next now … exercising to be better able to enjoy tomorrow’s now or next month’s now. … but NO day is more WORTHY OF CELEBRATION than Easter. NONE.

The Resurrection as FOUNDATION

Christ’s death and the Resurrection are what Christianity is about … without the Resurrection, we’re JUST sort of talking about ideas or concepts although they might be notions that we consider as Classics.

Without the Resurrection, the rest of Christian yakking is just mere storytelling, like a soothing classic story on radio in wartime … even though, some Christians might get defensive about this characterization, Christianity’s more than a classic story.

Of course, as Christians, we do tend to believe that the full story of Christ’s life really is the greatest story ever told … and not just because it takes us back to those comfortable memories of nice Christian grandmothers telling The Story to us in Sunday School, developing the setting, plot, characters, theme, conflict and point of view in our favorite story as we color in the drawings of the Sunday School handouts.

But the Resurrection is not kidstuff. AT ALL.

Just as the splattering blood and violent imagery of the PASSION OF THE CHRIST might not be bearable for children in Sunday School … the full implications of the Resurrection are similarly not for those of immature, incomplete faith … the Resurrection is what makes Christianity so intrinsically REVOLUTIONARY … understanding the Resurrection is what empowered early Christians to gladly serve as martyrs so that their sacrifice could evangelize the story of the Resurrection. If you don’t understand the empowering nature of the Resurrection, you simply have not yet begun to understand the ongoing REVOLUTION that Christianity is.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith. Without the Resurrection, the belief in God’s saving grace through Jesus is annhilated … the Resurrection is EVERYTHING on which the entirety of the Christian faith is built … there’s no point in having a discussion of even the basics of Mere Christianity without the Resurrection.

In 1 Corinthians 15 the Apostle Paul explains the importance of the resurrection to the Christian faith: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”

The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body,.

To KNOW God is to have directly experienced something like a vision or an epiphany of the independence of spiritual life … possible ONLY through the Resurrection.

A spiritual life is NOT JUST a reboot, not just a new operating system, or new hardware … although a spiritual life doesn’t necessarily preclude those things; it’s just that there’s way more to spiritual life than just the baggage that was necessary for our physical, mental, emotional lives. A spiritual life represent a entirely new way of being. It’s NOT a new way of living; it completely transcends the dimensions and physical laws of living. It’s NOT a new way of thinking; it transcends our paradigms of what human thought is, including anything that is an expression of artistic creativity or some form mental rationalization of calculus or any conceptual exploration paradigm. It’s NOT a new way of sensing or feeling or experiencing emotional triggers; it complete transcends the ego or notions of the self or evokative memories. A spiritual life is radically different; it is generally, beyond what most humans can experience most of the time in this existence, because of our preoccupation or attachment or clinging to hopes that we can be insprired by ideas or physical, mental and emotional desires.

To KNOW God is to have directly experienced something like a vision or an epiphany of the independence of spiritual life … possible ONLY through the Resurrection or something like a complete rebirth into the infinite dimensions of what we refer to “Heaven” or “Paradise” or “Nirvana” or “Moksha” or “Enlightenment” or “Salvation” or “Redemption” or “Atonement” or “Reconciliation” or “Restoration” or “Rebirth” or “Regeneration” or “Resurrection” or “Rapture” or “Ascension” or “Transfiguration” or “Transformation” or “Transmutation” … even the notion of transcendance does not do it justice, because we humans have not really experienced real transcendance.

UNTIL one can recognize how we, humans, are entirely LIMITED by our best expressions of ideas via words, semantics, semiotics, music, art or perception … we cannot really KNOW God – the belief in humanity has to die or be recognized as a barrier to understanding the infinite dimension of the spiritual life. To put it differently, it is kind of impossible to KNOW God, when we still entertain anthropogenic notions of a theistic super being OR that we are pretty much on God’s level and we’re just waiting for when we get to move with all of the baggage that we actually really love into the Big House with Him.

What the Resurrection MEANS

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just the most important thing … the Resurrection drives EVERYTHING about the Christian REVOLUTION.

The Resurrection is the proof that God’s love is stronger than death … but it’s ALSO a command for us to prepare to die FIGHTING … in whatever way, that we can FIGHT. If you do not understand Christianity as an ongoing REVOLUTION, you simply have not yet begun to understand what the Resurrection means and why it drives the overthrow of the worldly regime of power and governance based on material things that humans imagine that they possess.

Understanding the Resurrection MEANS that we fully understand WHY the baggage MUST stay behind in order to have a spiritual life. The baggage is not just our junky stuff – it’s our power, our wealth, our relationships – it’s EVERY THING that we point to as evidence that we’ve made it … the baggage is about the most important things that define who we might think we are. Our human baggage is represented by the full set of our material indications of life or measurable success.

The baggage HAS TO stay behind… for one thing, we just ain’t gonna need it any more … but that does not mean that we will not experience loss and pain, particularly as we cling to our beloved baggage. Our attachment to our human baggage is akin to a small child’s need for a blanket, a favorite toy, a doll or a secret friend. MOST IMPORTANTLY, that attachment to or love for our pile baggage is completely antithetical to LOVING God or knowing God … it’s sort of an Either/Or kind of thing – we can EITHER love God / OR we can love our baggage … except that misses the point that God is what provided us with what allowed to collect all of our baggage, including that egotistical notion we might have that we are completely self-reliant and built our pile of baggage by ourselves … if we see Christianity as a way for us to keep our baggage and get into the Big House, then we are still in a child-like state of an immature baby clinging to his blankie, completely and totally missing the transcendant point of the Resurrection.