OPINION:
Amid all the anxious and insistent noise of a busy and trivial world, the world’s 2.5 billion Christians starting Friday will celebrate the torture, execution and resurrection of an obscure itinerant preacher.
Others, to the extent they pay any attention at all, will simply note the execution of that same man.
Those are really the only two choices people have. Either Yeshua bar Yosef (better known as Jesus) was God — in which case his execution and resurrection are central to the lives of everyone on the planet — or he was a madman who was killed by the Romans (justly or otherwise) about 2,000 years ago.
Although the first option seems improbable, the second — that he was, essentially, a no one from a fringe outpost of the Roman Empire — is just as difficult to explain and believe. If you think he was just another colonial malcontent executed by the Romans, then you are left with the uncomfortable fact that what he did and what he taught touches almost everything we do, say and see on this planet.
Even now, at our current 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 — art, music, sculpture, literature — was built or created by his followers.
Most of the institutions that have survived for any length of time — 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 — fairness, charity, free will, justice — is derived directly from what he taught.
That’s not bad for someone who never published a thing, never left his small province, never had children and died without a penny to his name at the age of 33. Most of his immediate associates were illiterate (one or two could manage some Latin or Greek) and were solidly working class. They had no money, no powerful friends, no social or legal status.
Given all that, it may be easier to believe that the man tortured and executed on a hillside outside Jerusalem was in fact God and did in fact rise from the dead.
The story of the execution has all the sad themes that have followed humans throughout the ages. The corrupt official who 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. The possibility — for all of us sinners and perhaps especially for those who do not yet believe — of redemption.
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 he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him.”
The hope that believers 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; that 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, set aside the urgent matters of this world for a moment and think carefully about which of the two options — madman or son of God — is most likely to be true, and have a reverent and joyous Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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