The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: History or Myth?

The validity of the Bible and Christianity point to one event in history. Without this event, there is no Christian religion and there is no New Testament. The event which I am referring to is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Jesus never existed or if he never died on the cross and actually rose again in three days to live in a physical body, billions of people in history have wasted their efforts to follow a false religion. As you can see, the weight of this question is enormous and is one of the most important questions anyone can ask. So let’s begin…




Question 2b) Did Jesus REALLY resurrect from the dead?


Answer 2b) Nope… SYKE!!! Yeah he did. The answer is a bit more complicated than that and surprisingly for many people there is an academic argument for it. I am actually a bit nervous on attempting some sort of answer but once again, I will only try to explain as much as I feel comfortable with, the rest is up to you to research and find for yourself.

One of the important rules I learned in my New Testament course was that you must do your history before you do your theology. In order for us to understand what the scriptures are saying, in order for us to believe in the validity of what’s being said, we need to understand the context and culture in which the Bible is written. If we understand the culture and speech, then we can begin to see why they spoke the way they spoke which opens our eyes to what the meaning is behind the words and stories.

If we look at the Jewish history, there have been several people who were deemed as the messiah. Several people came along and it seemed several times as if the Jewish hope had finally arrived. The problem was that those people always died and usually the movement would have died with them. If the movement was to somehow move on, a sibling or someone extremely close would take up the position of the messiah and keep the movement alive (although this was probably not very effective). If this Jesus guy was as famous as the Bible claims and he actually died, those people would have either stopped believing in this movement or James/Judas (brothers) would have taken up the messiah role. But for some odd reason, people continued to follow this Jesus guy. They even claimed that he resurrected!

Although this does not seem significant to us, we must remember that Jesus died on the cross. The cross to Roman culture was a humiliating death reserved only for the worst criminals. The cross to the Jews signified the person being cursed by God. For Jews or Romans who followed Christ, their faith in him would have been dead at the cross for multiple reasons.




It is also traditionally believed that every disciple of Christ except for John was martyred. John by the way was boiled alive and somehow survived. It is understandable if they lied about Jesus’ death to gain fame and wealth but this was not the case. Being a part of this movement did not bring the disciples luxury rather it brought them death. They did not recant but they held on to the end after living lives of poverty and persecution. There was no logical reason for the disciples to actually have gone on with the Christian movement the way they did unless there was some reason to believe that Christ really rose from the dead.

There are many more arguments and the arguments I listed go much more in depth. There is a nearly 800 page book by NT Wright called The Resurrection of the Son of God which defends the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is also The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel which many people have relied on in the past. There is a lecture where NT Wright presents his argument. The lecture is actually too long to post so here's the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4647007557713600669#





This is a very weighty question and should be taken into serious consideration. Please do not take this lightly. If this is real, it has great implications for your life. If this event is true, the reality that God loves you and wants you to be in relationship with Him becomes a reality. The love of God becomes real! The reality that God took the initiative to bring you to Him becomes a reality rather than a theory. Please study this topic carefully.

Creation

Question 2a)

Is all this Bible stuff real? (pt 1, Creation)


Answer 2a)

Many of our world religions hold some sort of writing or canon in which they base their faith upon. The Muslims use the Koran, the Jews use the TaNaK (mainly the Torah), the Mormons the Golden Tablets and of course the Christians use the Bible. The followers of these faiths will generally allow their sacred writings to be the final authority on the way they live their lives and the way they think about the world. When a group of people put so much faith in ancient documents, we come to ask, “How real is your canon?”

Although I do not know very much about the writings of other religions, I understand the Bible to some extent and wish to discuss it a little more in depth. Now as we journey into some of the arguments for why the Bible is trustworthy and real, I just want to remind whoever is reading this that there are many more arguments to be made on all sides (Jeff Lim you punk ass haha). I don’t speak for all Christians either because there are many ways in which people in Christianity read their Bibles, this is just my take. Is there a way of proving anything to be 100% real? I don’t think so but there are evidences that overwhelmingly give one side more credibility than another. So here we go.


Creation


I think one of the major areas of theological dispute today is our reading into Creation. Is the Genesis Creation account to be taken literally or is it not? Let’s imagine that these next few lines are me writing a letter to a friend:

Sup homie? How’s it hangin’? Damn man, I haven’t seen you in a minute. Hope all is going well. Heard you were talking to that chicken-head again, what’s up with that?

Now let’s imagine that someone gets a hold of this letter a thousand years from now and begins to decipher it. The first thing that they might come to recognize is that I’m writing to a house. And I’m asking the house, “how’s it hangin’?” so this must be talking about the door hinges. And I as the writer must be very attached to this house because I seem to have problems with not having seen it in a span of 60 seconds. And apparently in the year 2010, people believed that their homes would talk to them and this particular house I am writing to was talking to a decapitated chicken’s head.

If I as the writer am to understand that this is how his letter is going to be read in the future, I’d either be very angry or extremely amused. We all know that this letter is written to a friend and the intent is to see how they are doing. The friend is probably talking to some girl who the writer is not too fond of and he is curious on what’s going on. To get to a point where we understand what’s being written, we must go back in time and observe the way in which the people used the language, the political and social atmosphere, the way certain genres are used, etc. To read the Bible, we must do very similar things.

I do not read Creation literally rather I find that it is a genre through which the author is trying to tell a story. However, it does not mean that Adam and Eve aren’t actual people. When one is to examine the different writing styles and story telling methods of the Ancient Near East, we see that there are several different Creation accounts which have similar points as the Judeo-Christian story. Assuming that Moses is the main author of the first five books of the Bible, assuming that the Israelites were in Egypt as oppressed people, we can see that God would use Moses to speak to the Israelites in a language in which they understand. They had several different creation stories and God would use these stories to speak to His people to tell them their place in the cosmos. There are definitely more points to the argument but I do not have the time to go over all of them nor do I have the patience to do the full research. In the meantime, this brief clip will explain the point I’m trying to make a little bit more. [incase the video doesn't work, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Ad-WdjOw]




The one part he didn’t explain was that in ancient times, the final thing that was placed into a temple was the image of the deity. In the Judeo-Christian Creation account, the final thing that is made in the Earth (God’s temple) is man who bears the image of God. This is mindblowing because the other creation accounts actually do not give man a high dignity but rather he is the result of murder, god’s hating work, etc. A professor stated in one of my classes that Christian IS humanism (for more reasons that creation of course).




As you can tell, I don’t believe that Genesis is a scientific account of how the Earth came to be but more of a story to tell us our place in the vast universe. By no means am I knocking on people who view a literal 6 day creation or a 6-time period creation but I feel that the Genesis Creation account being a genre of story-telling makes more sense. So you can see that if you read it from the point which I do, it leaves open the option of evolution, intelligent design, etc. Now I just want to make sure that no one thinks that I necessarily believe in evolution but I do feel that at this point it is the best explanation we have for the way the Earth came about. In 50 years we might have a better explanation, who knows? Although our different sides debate and disagree on the how, I think what we can come to do is agree on the who, which is God. I am not a deist, I believe God was in the midst of it all with His hand on every little detail.

I hope in this post, you can see that you don’t necessarily have to believe in the traditional Creation account to believe that the Bible is real. There are other ways of interpreting it which make it very legitimate. The key though of the Bible’s authenticity and reality is not Creation but the reality of Jesus Christ which we will go into in the following weeks. I hope this at least makes you, the reader, think a little.


*** If this post doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry. I’m working through this myself these days and I am wrestling like a mad man.***

To Those on the Boundary Line....

Perhaps for your whole life you have been looking into the church from the outside. There are many reasons why you cannot walk in through those doors but something about what goes on intrigues you. There is a battle inside of you of whether or not you can participate in this religion/gathering. There is the reality of life which sucks ass and then there’s the hope of something better which you want to claim as true. But for some reason you can’t help but to see that the hope does not outweigh what is bad. So here I would like to address a few of those issues. For the next few blog posts, I will try to address one specific question/topic and do my best to give some form of answer. I don’t expect to answer all of your questions or give you any sense of peace but I hope that this will at least begin to take away some of the myths of Christianity and what it implies to your life.

Question 1)

If there is a God who is good, why is there so much crap in the world?

Answer 1)

I’m assuming this isn’t the first time you’ve asked the question nor will this be the first time you hear the answer. You have heard that it is due to sin and humans choosing to disobey God rather than to obey Him. This caused a fracture in the relationship with God which has allowed suffering, evil and all the bad stuff to enter our world and lives. This is essentially true but I think that it is a very narrow-minded question if that’s where it ends.

We must begin to address how we are to react to suffering and what suffering implies to our lives.

Suffering and evil are all over the Bible in everyone’s life. There is a misconception that a Christian who loves God is going to be free of poverty, disease, suffering, etc. but that is just not biblical. Suffering in the Bible often involves 2 things (at least off the top of my head) which go hand in hand. Suffering seems to often be the result of some form of sin but suffering seems to always be a gateway for people to find their strength and hope in God.

We see in the life of the Israelites who were extremely close to entering into the Promised Land but due to their disobedience and unbelief, God condemned them to 40 more years of wandering in the desert. God could have very well allowed them into the land as they did not trust in Him but their whole existence afterward would be one lacking a relationship with their creator (which would have never allowed the rest of the world to know God). Through their 40 years in the desert, God put the Israelites to the test; to the point where they had nothing and

their very survival depended on His goodness to provide. God allowed and even ordained suffering because their faith was in jeopardy.

Suffering even enters into the life of the one person who never did anything wrong. His faith was never in question and his name was Jesus. He had to suffer on the cross because there was sin in the world which we have committed. As a result of that sin, Jesus Christ would suffer a death that was physically horrendous and culturally humiliating. In his time of suffering which was due to the sin and disobedience of others, his faith in the Father wa

s tested. Obediently he suffered understanding that this was the will of the Father so that the sins of the world would be atoned for. The doctrine and theological implications are great but in our context we only need to understand that Jesus also suffered (who did nothing wrong). In Christ’s suffering, he had to continue to depend and rely on the strength and goodness of the Father.

So what does this mean to you? I feel that these are the words God would use to speak to you:

“You are my good creation and I love you. I don’t like you being hurt and I don’t like that you are suffering. But you need to see that what is worse and more dreadful is you not loving me. I am not being egomaniacal. I not only give life but I am life. I want you to partake in the gift of life. I don’t like that you starve. I don’t like that you feel lonely. I don’t like that you suffer from diseases. As horrible as these things are, I need you to see that I will do whatever it takes for you to draw near me, even sacrificing my own son to prepare a way. I will force a whole nation to not believe in me if that is what it takes for you to love me. I am a loving God, king and father. I do not abandon you. I will allow you to suffer if that’s what it takes for you to receive true life and true joy. Remember though, you do not suffer alone, I have suffered with you on the cross. I have suffered so that you may have joy. I love you. I love you with all your imperfections and inabilities. I love you with all the wrong things you have done. You are my child whom I love and want to be with.”

So to conclude this post, I have a question for you. Do you question the goodness and existence of God because of the horrible things in your life? If so, how is your relationship and faith in God? Are you defining what is good or is He? Is there room for growth? Is he trying to force you to trust in Him?

Faith in Him won’t relieve you from any suffering but it will give you a picture of the end goal which is Him. If you put your suffering’s relief as the end goal, you will only find yourself in a mirage if you achieve peace. God refuses to be #2. He will not tolerate it and He will not only do what He can to force Himself to be #1, He will do all that He can to make Himself as great in your life as possible because He knows He is the greatest treasure.

Similar to working out, you need to break down your muscles and go through much pain, sweat and blood to get stronger. It doesn’t matter how much you work out or how advanced you are, you must continue to push yourself through more pain to get even better. There is no true plateau, you MUST continue to press on. God will not let you be satisfied in Him in one place, He will not stop until He is absolutely supreme, which is when we are with Him in eternity.

***** Please leave comments and questions if there are any. I don’t mean for this to be confrontation or controversial. Let’s be civil and hold dialogue. I realize I might be wrong, so let’s be adults and discuss this from many points of view.*****