Easter

Do You Feel Redeemed?

Let me preface this by asking those who are believers in the Christian faith to only read on if they understand that I am not a believer. I don’t want to change anyone’s mind, I just want to add my two cents about the religious myth.

I still love the candy and all the flowers that are used to decorate homes and churches.

The Creation of Adam from Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.

Easter is of course a Christian celebration. For the benefit of non Christians, let me add that it celebrates when Christ rose from the dead after his crucifixion (commemorated by Good Friday). In Christian theology, Jesus’ death was a necessary act, meant as atonement for the sin of Adam, which sin stained all of mankind.

When I was a child in Catholic school I accepted all of it. We received religious education in school, also attended numerous church services (including what was called the 40 hours devotion - a means to torture children to be sure.). So we were brainwashed to believe.

Anything that we could not understand was styled a mystery. Of course for children everything is a mystery, from the internal combustion engine to how babies are made. The easy explanation that this or that must be believed without understanding (because it was a mystery) began to fall apart by the time I was in high school. Before I began college, I had left the Church behind.

The story of Adam and Eve is a creation myth and is part of the Torah, so the essential sacred texts of Judaism. Yet Jews do not also believe in an inherited sin of Adam that must be atoned for. It is a curious sin too - Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of a certain magical tree. That’s it. They were tossed out of Eden and because of this would live hard lives and… childbirth would be a bitch.

This is an image of the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Man. Painted by Jan Breughel with Peter Paul Rubens doing the figures.

The expulsion from Paradise by James Tissot,

Of course an all knowing God would know that making something forbidden also makes it tempting. But the old testament God was more of a petty tyrant with too much time on his hands. And a bit of a control freak. If the story were re-written today a kindly old God would find Adam and Even in hiding and ask… do you have something to tell me?

Then we have redemption. Christ’s death on the cross is supposed to be necessary to atone for the inherited “original sin.” Yet instead of wiping the slate clean, all must also be baptized and accept Jesus as well.

That is a lot to ask. It never made the least sense. That is, did the crucifixion work or not? If it did, they why do we need baptism?

And what about the world outside of Palestine? How could a just God expect people all over the world to be persuaded to follow a middle eastern peasant (Jesus). A lot of them have, but many more have not. And why would they?

Can we also remind readers that the story of Adam and Eve was a myth. There was no first couple, we evolved from lower primates. But having invented a perfect world for Adam and Eve the story teller had to find a way to get them out of the Garden if Eden. If this had not happened, then readers of Genesis would ask where the hell is Eden? And let’s go there rather than stay in dusty Palestine.

Finally we have the notion that God would not be satisfied unless his son were tortured and murdered. This is sadistic. A simple apology should have been enough.

A print of Christ being scourged.

Christ being nailed to the Cross. Netherlandish 1450s.

Jesus never spoke of original sin. It seems that St. Paul was the first when he wrote this, “Well then; it was through one man that sin came into the world, and through sin death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned.” The concept was formalized a few centuries later with St. Augustine.

To modern readers, St. Paul comes off as a misogynist. Also as someone afraid of sex.

And were we to create a myth created today, it would not include inherited blame - this is an ancient idea that is now discredited.

I still celebrate Easter. I always assemble baskets of chocolate bunnies etc for my wife and my son. With my wife’s passing this year we might spend a quiet day. But maybe I will get some kielbasa and sour kraut and at least have a nice lunch.

PS: While I am not a believer in Christian doctrine, I am open about a higher power. I also recognize the value of ritual, so of marriages and funerals. I have attended a few simple funerals where the only prayer was the 23rd Psalm. A simple prayer works for me.