A GIRL answered the door to a census taker “My daddy the doctor isn’t home. He’s performing an appendectomy." “Wow!” said the census taker, "that sure is a big word for a little girl! Do you know what it means?" The little girl replied "$2343! And that doesn't even include Mummy’s pay as the anaesthesiologist!" As last year’s Census data is released, each of us is going to find different stats relevant or irrelevant as we are a diverse nation of people, and becoming more diverse. The recent stat I have been musing over most is that 30 per cent of Australians identified as having no religion, compared with 25 per cent in the 2011 census.
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Why? I think most of the reasons are obvious. Still, I think this figure will plateau while still in the minority. Worldwide belief in God is on the increase, though I feel I should agree with those stating this is not of necessity a good thing as some people’s belief in a violent god has lead them to commit atrocities.
My preferred image of God and one I have clearly encouraged, is Jesus. You can see with your own eyes that, although all living things die, nature is not destructive but is a nature of regeneration; what I like to call “Resurrectional”. In my discussions I have discovered two major objections people have to the resurrection of Jesus. The first is that Jesus’ disciples stole his body and said he resurrected. My answer is that after the crucifixion, the disciples were all in hiding for fear of the Jews. Jesus said he would rise from the dead but the Scriptures point out that they never really understood what this meant.
From the moment Jesus was arrested they all ran for their lives. And how and why three days later did his followers steal his body from a tomb that was under heavy guard due to the fact that the Jewish people knew Jesus said he would rise from the dead and they already feared that his followers might steal his body?
If the disciples of Jesus stole his body then that means they knew Jesus deceived them also and therefore he was not God. What did they then have to gain by preaching a fake resurrection? All of them spent the rest of their lives being persecuted and even tortured. They could only have seen the resurrected Jesus.
The second major objection I have discovered to Jesus’ resurrection is that Jesus’ disciples were themselves deceived. This theory is called the “Hallucination Hypothesis”. That one person or even several of his followers might hallucinate out of a state of intense nervous excitement after the crucifixion that Jesus did appear to them is possible. That all Jesus’ disciples and thousands of others suffered from the same hallucination simultaneously and over a long period of time is impossible.
Psychology points out to us, as does our own human experience, that different people of different mental states react to tragedy in different ways.
Apart from this, Jesus’ followers did not believe he was going to die and so were not expecting the Resurrection in the way Jesus intended: several of his followers including Mary Magdalen were going to his tomb the Sunday after his death with spices to embalm his body, and when she saw no body she did not think Jesus had risen; she thought he had been stolen. When she told the disciples Jesus spoke to her and he had risen, they ran to the tomb because they didn’t believe her. Believing in the resurrection has a lot going for it: a meaning for this life, a meaning for the next and even sound and logical credibility.
FATHER BRENDAN LEE
