OPINION:
This weekend, the world’s 2½ billion Christians will celebrate the torture, execution and resurrection of an obscure Jewish carpenter. Others, if they pay any attention, will simply note the execution of that man.
Those are really the only two choices people have. Either Yeshua bar Yusef, better known as Jesus, was God, in which case his torture, execution and resurrection are central to the lives of everyone on the planet, or he was an itinerant Jewish preacher and a madman who was killed by the Romans about 2,000 years ago.
Although the first option seems improbable, the second option — that he was essentially a nobody from a fringe outpost of the Roman Empire — may be as difficult to explain and believe. If you think he was just another Jew executed by the Romans, you’re left with the uncomfortable fact that what he did and what he taught touches almost everything we do, say and see on this planet. His life, teachings and example have driven humanity for the past 20 centuries.
Even now, at this desiccated spiritual and intellectual moment, the religion he created remains the most powerful force for good in the world. Most of what we consider Western civilization, including art, music, sculpture and literature, was built or created by his followers. Most institutions that have survived for any length — universities, hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, the legal system, etc. — were invented or reinvented in their current form by his followers.
Most of what we aspire to and appeal to every day, including fairness, charity, free will and justice, is derived directly from what he taught. That’s not bad for someone who never published a thing, never left his small Roman province, never had children and died without a penny to his name at age 33. Most of his immediate associates were illiterate. One or two could manage a bit of Latin or Greek, the dominant languages of commerce and statecraft, for 1,500 years after the first Good Friday.
It may be easier to believe that the man tortured and executed on a hillside outside Jerusalem was God and did rise from the dead. The story of the execution and subsequent resurrection has all the sad themes that have followed humans throughout the ages. The corrupt official, the Roman governor in this instance, cynically asks, “Quid est veritas?” right before sentencing a man he knows to be innocent to death.
The awesome hypocrisy of the tribal elites and the collaborators of an occupied nation who seal the prisoner’s fate by asserting that they have no king but Caesar. The fickleness and the brutality of the mob. The treachery of a friend. The loneliness of the accused. The love and desperation of a mother.
The story also contains great joy: the resilience of truth, the ultimate victory of good over evil and the possibility of redemption for all sinners, perhaps especially for those who do not yet believe.
Seven hundred years before Jesus appeared on earth, the prophet Isaiah wrote about the carpenter and his terrible moment on Good Friday: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. But he has borne our griefs and was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him.”
The hope we recognize on Christmas bears full fruit during the crucifixion on Good Friday and the resurrection on Easter Sunday. The certain knowledge that God loves us. He wants us to be happy and to live lives of meaning and beauty. That we are important, loved and worthy of being redeemed. That whatever travails we endure are temporary.
The cross on Friday and the rolled-away stone on Sunday are testaments to all that. This weekend, think carefully about which of the two options is most likely true, and have a reverent and joyous Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and a co-host of “The Unregulated Podcast.”
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