Since Easter is this weekend, I thought I would share this column I wrote for the Daily Nebraskan a couple of years ago:
TRUEBLOOD: Commercialized Easter hides important meaning for Christian faith
Published April7, 2009
When I was young, Easter was just about as exciting as Christmas. The night before Easter I would anticipate the Easter Bunny's visit like I would Santa Claus. On Easter morning I would awaken to see a pastel, plastic egg laying somewhere in my room, usually on my nightstand. It always thrilled me that the Easter Bunny did not forget me, but I was also a little disappointed that I did not wake up when he (or she) visited my room.
After retrieving the egg left by the bunny, I would rush downstairs to see what was left in my Easter basket. Usually it was a carton of tiny egg-shaped bubble-gum balls, a chocolate rabbit and some kind of toy.
For breakfast we would eat the colorful eggs our family dyed. I loved dying eggs and thought it was cool having rainbow-stained hands, but my mother didn't appreciate the fun of getting dye everywhere as much.
Growing up, I never asked my parents why a six-foot bunny hid candy-filled eggs in our house or why we received baskets filled with goodies like chocolate, toys and green plastic grass. I also never thought to ask why we colored eggs only once a year. Why would I question these things? I was a kid and it was fun to hunt for candy-filled eggs and get baskets with cool stuff and eat multi-hued eggs.
In my recent deliberations I realized that I had no clue what all of the above mentioned things have to do with Easter. During conversations with some friends it became clear that many of them have no idea how these things relate to the holiday either.
My own parents even admitted that they do not know where certain traditions come from. They supposed that they only carried them on because they were raised having Easter egg hunts and such.
I'm not against any of the fun traditions that my family has, but I have to wonder if the focus on those things doesn't mask what I should really be focusing on.
Easter, like Christmas, has become another commercialized holiday. Many people, Christian or not, seem to buy into the commercialized aspect of it – the bunnies, eggs, candy, baskets – without even questioning the purpose behind all of it.
Also like Christmas, Easter has its roots in pagan celebration. The name is derived from the Teutonic goddess of spring Eostre. The word Easter is never found in the Bible and has no connection with the death and resurrection of Christ.
Eggs and rabbits are signs of fertility and the coming of spring. Since these symbols also represent new life, they have been blended in with the Christian celebration of new life found through the resurrection of Christ.
Although eggs and rabbits might be connected with Jesus in some indirect way, I want to lay aside these things that have been commercialized and shift the focus from the bright and fuzzy to the more gruesome and grizzly.
If you have heard of or seen Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," you are familiar with the story's depiction of the final 12 hours of Jesus' life on earth. It's a very disturbing yet compelling movie that left me with one lingering question: why?
In Romans 3:25-26, the Apostle Paul explains that God presented Jesus as a sacrifice for all the wrong things people have done. He writes that people are made right with God when they believe Jesus shed his blood as a sacrifice to demonstrate God's justice.
How does this seem fair at all? If Jesus was the man the Bible made him out to be, then he was blameless and deserved no punishment.
But as the title of Gibson's movie implies, it was not the "Trial of Christ" that resulted in his excruciating death, but rather, his passion.
Webster's Dictionary defines passion as "extreme, compelling emotion or intense emotional drive."
What emotional drive was so intense that it led Christ to the cross? Love.
Romans 5:8 says that God demonstrated his great love for us "by sending Christ to die for us" while we were still rebelling against God and living for ourselves.
Easter, perhaps better termed Resurrection Sunday, is a pinnacle holiday for Christians. The message a person hears in church on Resurrection Sunday is the same message that resonates throughout the year: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
Easter for Christians is the remembrance of Christ's sacrifice on the cross more than 2,000 years ago, and the celebration that he did not stay dead, but overcame death. The resurrection is the linchpin of the Christian faith.
If Jesus Christ were still dead, the faith of Christians would also be dead. According to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:14, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."
In "The Case for Easter," Lee Strobel, a journalist and former atheist, writes "The resurrection is the supreme vindication of Jesus' divine identity and his inspired teaching. It's the proof of his triumph over sin and death. It's the foreshadowing of the resurrection of his followers. It's the basis of Christian hope. It's the miracle of all miracles."
Gary Habermas, former president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and author of seven books about the rising of Jesus Christ said in an interview with Strobel, "The resurrection was undoubtedly the central proclamation of the early church from the very beginning.
"The earliest Christians didn't just endorse Jesus' teachings; they were convinced they had seen him alive after his crucifixion. That's what changed their lives and started the church. Certainly, since this was their center-most conviction, they would have made absolutely sure that it was true."
What Strobel and Habermas understand is that without the resurrection of Christ, there would be no Christianity. There would perhaps still be Easter – bunnies, eggs and all – but no Christianity.
While Easter may be a fun day for the kids to hunt some eggs and eat lots of candy, I hope that many will take the time to investigate for themselves the more meaningful facts of Resurrection Sunday, a day that unfortunately coincides with a commercialized Easter.
After retrieving the egg left by the bunny, I would rush downstairs to see what was left in my Easter basket. Usually it was a carton of tiny egg-shaped bubble-gum balls, a chocolate rabbit and some kind of toy.
For breakfast we would eat the colorful eggs our family dyed. I loved dying eggs and thought it was cool having rainbow-stained hands, but my mother didn't appreciate the fun of getting dye everywhere as much.
Growing up, I never asked my parents why a six-foot bunny hid candy-filled eggs in our house or why we received baskets filled with goodies like chocolate, toys and green plastic grass. I also never thought to ask why we colored eggs only once a year. Why would I question these things? I was a kid and it was fun to hunt for candy-filled eggs and get baskets with cool stuff and eat multi-hued eggs.
In my recent deliberations I realized that I had no clue what all of the above mentioned things have to do with Easter. During conversations with some friends it became clear that many of them have no idea how these things relate to the holiday either.
My own parents even admitted that they do not know where certain traditions come from. They supposed that they only carried them on because they were raised having Easter egg hunts and such.
I'm not against any of the fun traditions that my family has, but I have to wonder if the focus on those things doesn't mask what I should really be focusing on.
Easter, like Christmas, has become another commercialized holiday. Many people, Christian or not, seem to buy into the commercialized aspect of it – the bunnies, eggs, candy, baskets – without even questioning the purpose behind all of it.
Also like Christmas, Easter has its roots in pagan celebration. The name is derived from the Teutonic goddess of spring Eostre. The word Easter is never found in the Bible and has no connection with the death and resurrection of Christ.
Eggs and rabbits are signs of fertility and the coming of spring. Since these symbols also represent new life, they have been blended in with the Christian celebration of new life found through the resurrection of Christ.
Although eggs and rabbits might be connected with Jesus in some indirect way, I want to lay aside these things that have been commercialized and shift the focus from the bright and fuzzy to the more gruesome and grizzly.
If you have heard of or seen Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," you are familiar with the story's depiction of the final 12 hours of Jesus' life on earth. It's a very disturbing yet compelling movie that left me with one lingering question: why?
In Romans 3:25-26, the Apostle Paul explains that God presented Jesus as a sacrifice for all the wrong things people have done. He writes that people are made right with God when they believe Jesus shed his blood as a sacrifice to demonstrate God's justice.
How does this seem fair at all? If Jesus was the man the Bible made him out to be, then he was blameless and deserved no punishment.
But as the title of Gibson's movie implies, it was not the "Trial of Christ" that resulted in his excruciating death, but rather, his passion.
Webster's Dictionary defines passion as "extreme, compelling emotion or intense emotional drive."
What emotional drive was so intense that it led Christ to the cross? Love.
Romans 5:8 says that God demonstrated his great love for us "by sending Christ to die for us" while we were still rebelling against God and living for ourselves.
Easter, perhaps better termed Resurrection Sunday, is a pinnacle holiday for Christians. The message a person hears in church on Resurrection Sunday is the same message that resonates throughout the year: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
Easter for Christians is the remembrance of Christ's sacrifice on the cross more than 2,000 years ago, and the celebration that he did not stay dead, but overcame death. The resurrection is the linchpin of the Christian faith.
If Jesus Christ were still dead, the faith of Christians would also be dead. According to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:14, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."
In "The Case for Easter," Lee Strobel, a journalist and former atheist, writes "The resurrection is the supreme vindication of Jesus' divine identity and his inspired teaching. It's the proof of his triumph over sin and death. It's the foreshadowing of the resurrection of his followers. It's the basis of Christian hope. It's the miracle of all miracles."
Gary Habermas, former president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and author of seven books about the rising of Jesus Christ said in an interview with Strobel, "The resurrection was undoubtedly the central proclamation of the early church from the very beginning.
"The earliest Christians didn't just endorse Jesus' teachings; they were convinced they had seen him alive after his crucifixion. That's what changed their lives and started the church. Certainly, since this was their center-most conviction, they would have made absolutely sure that it was true."
What Strobel and Habermas understand is that without the resurrection of Christ, there would be no Christianity. There would perhaps still be Easter – bunnies, eggs and all – but no Christianity.
While Easter may be a fun day for the kids to hunt some eggs and eat lots of candy, I hope that many will take the time to investigate for themselves the more meaningful facts of Resurrection Sunday, a day that unfortunately coincides with a commercialized Easter.
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