We moderns are obsessed with “causes.”  We love to stand and fight for things.  We fight to end racial prejudice, we fight for social justice, we fight to end hunger, we fight to end war, we fight for abortion, we fight to end drugs, we fight for life, we fight to preserve the Constitution, we fight to bear arms, we fight for the flag, we fight for faith and so forth.  We really are modern-day crusaders.  Our mighty banners of conquest are raised through hashtags, Facebook filters, and a sea of tweets as we exclaim death to the infidels who are our opposites. 
 
Do not misunderstand.  Such a critique is not a wholesale denouncement to standing for or against various ideas, values, policies, or platforms.  We can and should stand when we see wrongs exercised at the expense of justice and goodness.  We should “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” in which we find ourselves just as God exclaimed through the Prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 29:7).  But as always there is a grave danger that lurks in our midst when we take up such a quest.  Even in our campaigning to “make the world better” or “stand against injustice” we can lose sight of Christ; we can become blinded to the True End for which we fight.  C.S. Lewis speaks with wisdom on this point.  In The Screwtape Letters Lewis’ Screwtape gives the young Wormwood insight into the ways ‘causes’ can be used to slowly destroy his patient Christian’s faith.  Read and weep,
 
All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy [God], are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period.  Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them….  Whichever [your Christian patient] adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the [the cause he takes up] as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part.  Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which [his] religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause’, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of [the effort]. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours – and the more ‘religious’ (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.[1]
 
The shift here is subtle, as all the shifts are that we have looked at in the Gentle Slopes series.  Notice that at first “The Cause” we take up is secondary and just part of our Christianity.  This is when we still are keeping Christ at the center of all our reasoning and intended ends.  But then notice, in time our Christianity slowly becomes part of “The Cause,” it becomes peripheral, deadened by earthly concerns alone.  In short, Christianity slowly loses its Eternal reality and subsequently its spirituality.  And so, we enter a state of being Pharisaical in all the good causes we take up – they become ends in themselves instead of satellites orbiting the greater constellation of Christ.  So, for example, Jesus is a white gun-toting red-blood libertarian at our gun conventions, or He is the brown man oppressed by systemic imperial oppression at our social justice marches, or He is the free-caring anti-judgmental “love is love” guru at our sexual liberation rallies, or He is the no nonsense stern faced hyper judgmental commander at our conferences.
 
The sad thing is that in all of these Christ has ceased to guide the values, ideas, and platform, of “the cause” and instead has become another piece of furniture we rearrange in the rooms of our life to accent our preferences (i.e. our social, theological, or political preferences).  What is happening is we are losing sight of the eternal by making that which is temporal our eternal. 
 
 
THE DISTINCTIVE CAUSE FOR WHICH WE CRUSADE
This is stingily personal.  I tend to be the type that can make axes and grind them.  I have been a “keyboard crusader,” a social media warrior, and even a professional political ranter.  Sometimes simultaneously.  I will be frank, I make no apologies for speaking Truth nor standing for Truth, but there is something to be said when the central driving focus, the bread, and butter of existence, of one’s life (thinking of how I can be at times!) becomes consumed with things doomed to ash and shadow (Psalm 102:26, Matthew 24:35, Luke 21:33, Hebrews 1:11).
 
Once again, do not misunderstand!  I am not saying one should not be engaged in great causes or stand for one’s values or ideas or even support a platform or a policy.  This is noble, this is good, and this is just.  But what we should do as we engage in such causes is ask the fundamental question,
 
“For what end do I do this?” 
 
It is the Adversary’s job to keep us – through busyness, exhaustion, and service – from ever asking such a question.  But we must.  If we honestly believe the world is not less than but more than matter and energy, if we truly believe that there is a purpose for which all of Creation was made, if we are truly convinced that humans have a cosmic identity and meaning, if we truly believe Jesus is the climactic spiritual revelation to all human questions and needs, if we truly believe Heaven is a place to be gained and Hell a place to be shunned, then we cannot but ask such a question! 
 
Sadly, much of modern Christendom cannot be bothered to ask such a question.  We help in soup kitchens, we assist at shelters, we even drill wells in Uganda, we council drug addicts, we march to end racism, we rally to save the unborn, we teach Kids Church, we coordinate VBS, we organize connect groups, we develop outreach programs, and on and on.  But if all of this is devoid of an eternal perspective, if in all of this Christ and His Gospel is vacated, then all of it is shallow and ultimately pointless.  In fact, in none of these examples is such work isolated to the Christian Church.  Thousands of secular organizations and dozens of religious groups do the same thing! 
 
What then is the Christian distinctive?   
 
Some may argue at this point that the good of such things abovementioned is within themselves.  “Helping people is a good in itself and is what ‘it’s all about!’” one could exclaim.  There is an element of truth here but it isn’t the whole Truth.  Feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and even assisting widows and orphans, were done by Pharisees in Jesus’ day.  Yet Jesus said of many of the Pharisees “you are whitewashed tombs…full of dead men’s bones” who,
 
“outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness”
Matthew 23:27-28
 
While much could be said here one point is stinging: the Pharisees were often good people doing good things, standing for good “causes,” and yet they still were full of deadness.  What deadness?  Hypocrisy and lawlessness.  In short, they had no focus upon authentic spirituality (hypocrisy) nor the Word (the Law) within the things they did.  This is vital to understand: the Pharisees' faults were not found in the execution of the goods they were doing; it was found in the reasons for which they were doing what they were doing.  The things/causes/activities became ends in themselves only or they were done for self-centered reasons, which is really two sides of the same coin.  In short, the “causes” became their idols – the things they lived for, would die for, got ultimate meaning from, and ultimately worshiped!
 
The Christian message is not less than the just earthly causes we fight for, but it is much greater!  And when such greatness is absent from the earthly cause, we miss the mark.  The Apostle James said it this way,
 
26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:26-27  
 
Notice that there is a duality of the “religious life” displayed.  The true pure acceptable religious life is one characterized by an authentic spiritually controlled tongue (i.e. a Christ-centered heart) plus good works towards just causes (i.e. widows and orphans) plus a deep focus on the highest need of spiritual purity without compromise.  Well, what is it that keeps us pure without compromise?  The Gospel – which is itself something we not only “keep for ourselves” but should be exclaiming to others!  Lest the point be lost, consider the words of the Apostle Paul,
 
14 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
Romans 1:14-16
 
In other words, Paul makes clear that evangelistic zeal to reach Jews and Gentiles (people of non-Christian faith – like the ones we fight for and with for just causes) cannot be divorced of the central needful thing: THE GOSPEL.  It is the gospel which is the power unto salvation, not a bowl of soup or post about racial solidarity alone. 
 
AIMING AT HEAVEN THAT EARTH MAY BE THROWN IN
The meaning of things is inherently tied to their intended ends.  When we say we stand for this or that cause because it is “right” or “just” or “good” we are exclaiming that there is a way the World should be; we are asserting, consciously or subconsciously, that Right and Just and Good are actually real and that people (who are agents of rights, justice, and goodness) are inherently valuable sacred ends in themselves.  But all of this is only made possible by a transcendent all powerful Creative Moral Law Giver who gives an inherent sacredness to values and life itself.  It is such a One to whom we should be ultimately pointing since all purpose’s crescendo in Him.  When this Reality is forgotten amid our crusading, we castrate the greater meaning and purposes for which we fight and stand.  Even further, we do disservice to those for whom we fight (against or with) because we have failed to make known to them the ultimate beauty and truth that lies behind the earthly acts we do. 
 
In closing, I am reminded of the poignant words of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity,
 
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.[2]

_______________________________
[1] C.S. Lewis, Signature Classics, The Screwtape Letters (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2003), pg. 205
[2] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, Harper edition, 2001), pp. 134-135

The great Church Father Basil of Caesarea (330-379 A.D.), when citing Ephesians 5:4 on the nature of humor said,
 
“The Christian…ought not to indulge in jesting [and] he ought not to laugh nor even to suffer laugh makers. He must not talk idly, saying things which are of no service to the hearers.”[1]
 
In short, for Basil, humor was no laughing matter.  Now we recognize that this is excessive and somewhat priggish on the surface, but below in the meat of thought lies a truth: laughter has soul shaping power.  But seldom do we ever think about this – even we Christians.  We enlightened moderns are living in an age of sitcoms, stand-up comedians, and infinite memes, which wash over us with rivers of puns, wit, and knee slapping entertainment.  But even here there lies both great joy and great danger.  Even here, in our humor and laughter, we must become reflective and ask if we have allowed the law of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5) to reign. 
 
Humor can be a Balm and Bane to Life
Humor and laughter are sweet balms of life.  They make life bearable and beautiful by breaking down barriers and helping us forget about the business and seriousness of reality.  All the incongruities (the absurdities, oddities, and “out-of-placeness”) have a humbling effect upon us as creatures.[2]  Through humor we tend to make fun of ourselves and our place in the world.  Therefore, humor has a humbling aspect to it at times because we realize just how absurd and weird we can be.  As one author said, “[Humour] involves some confession of human weakness”[3] and is “the chief antidote to pride; and has been, ever since the time of the Book of Proverbs, the hammer of fools.”[4] The great English philosopher and essayist G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) said it this way,
 
“If you really ask yourself why we laugh at a man sitting down suddenly in the street you will discover that the reason is not only recondite, but ultimately religious. All the jokes about men sitting down on their hats are really theological jokes; they are concerned with the Dual Nature of Man. They refer to the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.”[5]
 
There is much to unpack here but we will point to only one minor aspect of what Chesterton is getting at.  The fact is humor is deeper than we think.  Laughter reveals more than we think.  They reveal something about us as a people.  Why we laugh at what we laugh says something about how we think the world is and who and what humans are, and how it all should be.  This is centrally because we were made to be social creatures who live a certain way in the world and seek joy in the good.  What grounds all of this is the comforting and empowering knowledge that we serve a Creator King who laughs and has joy (Psalm 2:1-12, Zephaniah 3:17) and in fact has made us to be people who can laugh, and play, and express such joy through lighthearted interactions (Ecclesiastes 3:4; Job 8:21; Proverbs 15:13, 17:22; Psalm 126:2-3; Luke 6:21).       
 
But with everything, sin and darkness become the kill-alls and makers of infinite devaluation.  This is where a demon can give us insight. 
 
C.S. Lewis in all his piercing correctness speaks straight to the quick of the power and influence of humor in The Screwtape Letters.  In the section below the senior demon Screwtape informs his underling Wormwood of the most effective ways of utilizing humor and laughter to slowly destroy purity and sacredness in the life of his patient Christian believer.  Before this conversation you will remember our previous post in the Gentle Slopes Series which dealt with friendships.  Here the Christian patient has not only begun to hang out with two carousing skeptical unbelievers but has been introduced to another broader group of friends, all of them obsessed with revelry, novelties, and joking.  Screwtape decides to advice Wormwood on his next steps with his patient,
 
My Dear Wormwood,
 
Everything is clearly going very well. I am specially glad to hear that the two new friends [of your Christian patient] have now made him acquainted with their whole set. All these, as I find from the record office, are thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and worldlings who without any spectacular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortable towards our Father's house. You speak of their being great laughers…. [This] point is worth some attention.
 
I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided….  Fun is closely related to Joy-a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct…. 
 
[But the] real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction….  Humour is for [some] the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame…. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful-unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient [the Christian]….  Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour".
 
But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny….  If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy [and] it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.[6]
 
In this passage Lewis is soberly reminding us of how the Adversary of our souls uses humor to slowly deaden our souls to any sense of shame or sacredness. 
 
Laughter Often Carries an Agenda
One point worth noting that Lewis shows is that behind laughter there often lies an agenda.  We do not often think of this when we enjoy good banter.  But this is true.  That agenda can be merely to bring joy into others’ lives – which is a noble activity within itself.  But often it can be pregnant with ulterior motives: such as to generate self-aggrandizement or attention-seeking or to soften people’s acceptability of particular behaviors, beliefs, or values.  Here, on this last point specifically, lies the far more subtle yet sinister element of humor. 
 
Humor can shape our souls.  It can also shape culture.  G.K. Chesterton poignantly said back in the twilight of Victorian England,
 
“If you really want to know what is going to happen to the future of our democracy, do not read the modern sociological prophecies, do not read even [utopian novels]…. Read the [comic pages] as if they were the dark tablets graven with the oracles of the gods. For…they contain some hint of the actual habits and manifest desires of the…people. If we are really to find out what the democracy will ultimately do with itself, we shall surely find it, not in the literature which studies the people, but in the literature which the people studies.”[7]
 
If you want to shape people’s souls, and even guide the culture of a people, then shape what they laugh about.  Shape the entertain they consume.  In time what they consume will consume them.  They will become what they cajole and joke about.  Why?  Because laughter has the inherent capacity to bypass the mind and go straight to the emotional and appetite driven parts of our nature.  These areas of our souls are the most malleable and guiding aspects of our being.[8]   If you want people to be willing to start accepting a particular behavior, to normalize it, then your best methodology is to soften it as playful, innocent, and lighthearted. 
 
I think we can say with some accuracy we can see this in our own lives and culture.  Before any particular behavior or preference or lifestyle is accepted in our society it is always “normalized” on our televisions and the silver screen.  Make it look “normal” or friendly or innocent within the context of story making and laughter and you have all but won over the audience.  If you do not think this is the case, then take a moment for some personal inventory.  Ask yourself: How much have you changed in the past 10 years in your views of religion, morality, modesty, gender identities and roles, language use, sexual preferences, politics, and justice?   Have you come to accept, loosen up on, or shrug off certain ideas within these areas?  Now ask yourself, how have you come to change so?  Did you sit down and do a lot of arm-chair philosophizing and dialoging?  Did you read a ton of philosophical, theological, political, sociological, and psychological manuals, treatises, and books?  For most, the answers would be no. 
 
While we can change our views on life based on mere experiences, education, and political shifts, these are not the central methods of how we change.  Change happens gradually and centrally through the relationships we share and the entertainment we consume.  It is inescapable and undeniable.  This past year alone we Americas spent a whopping $30.03 billion on entertainment[9] and spent an average over 7.5 hours a day using media.[10]  On top of this the U.S. media and entertainment industry has affirmed that its budget is going to exceed $825 billion by 2023.[11]  Interesting enough, connecting to the main point of this post and Chesterton’s words, the most popularly consumed genre by us is comedy.[12]
 
It is a truism: the things we consume in turn consume us.
 
The movies, TV shows, video-games, and music of our age are all our modern high priests and philosophers slowly teaching us to accept the ways of the idols of our age.  Laughter has always, but especially now in our age, possessed the power of democratizing or “leveling” values, behaviors, and beliefs.  It has the capacity to make everything a desacralized joke or meme or caricature.  As a result, slowly, unknowingly, unthoughtfully, the concepts and virtues of shame, respect, honor, dignity, faith, beauty, and charity are chipped down and become lost in a sea of chuckles and shrugs.  This especially happens with religion and faith. 
 
The Power of Laughter to Desacralize
Some of the most effective uses of laughter are those about spiritual things.  Do not misunderstand nor assume that we cannot be joyous nor joking with our Faith.  I believe there is a healthy, respectful form of this.  But go deeper here.  Think for a minute.  There is truth in this worth mining.  How far do we go with this? 
 
Behind kiddish jests or irreverent puns about God and His Son in particular there can lie an inheritance of irreverence.  Slowly the laughs can chip away at the sacredness and transcendence of Faith claims, bringing them low and close to the mud.  It is not hard to see the logical jump that can and often happens when we move from laughing about Christ in a joke to inadvertently casualizing Christ in life.  When this happens, we have entered a slippery slope of shifting from disciples worshiping at His feet to mocking bystanders who see Him as part of the regular landscape of life.     
 
This is all subtle.  There is deception here.  Awaken yourself to this. 
 
Joy and laughter are a medicine (Proverbs 17:22) but they can also become a hallucinogenic to our souls.  They have within them the capacity to degenerate into flippancy and irreverence.  This is Lewis’ warning from the lips of a devil.
 
This may sound prudish.  But here again is Lewis is spot on.  The simplest way to never have to question ones consumption of entertainment or what one laughs is to judge every judgement or correction as “Puritanical.”  “Well that may be offensive to you, but it isn’t to me” is a common phrase at this point.  Or the mantras of “spiritual maturity” or “that’s the way of the world” or “freedom in Christ” are conjured to expunge any sense of propriety or chastity in the realm of entertainment and laughter.  I will not fight this game.  Neither will Lewis.  But be aware that you are dancing in the realm of the Adversary.  He is elated that you are inundated and do not care.  He is ecstatic to your gilded over indifference. 
 
There is no lie here.  It is tricky to locate what are the acceptable or unacceptable levels of laughter and humor.  When does joy devolve into vulgarity?  This is not easy to gage and if you are looking for a list of movies, books, and TV shows that are acceptable or not then you are missing the point of the post.  We moderns love our check off lists of does and don’ts.  But the authentic spiritual life doesn’t work like that.  The key is not in a list but a consistent self-examination by the power of the Holy Spirit in ever facet of our lives, even the places we least expect or least want Him to check.  
 
Are you doing this with what you consume with entertainment?  Are you considering how Christ addresses that which you laugh at?  If there is no reflection at all, then you may be in the realm of devils.  If you are reflecting, then allow the Holy Spirit to continue to speak and guide you into His ways. 
 
3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
Ephesians 5:3-4

__________________________
[1] Saint Basil of Caesarea, “On the Perfection of the Life of Solitaries” from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202022.htm
[2] If you want a more technical or philosophical understanding of the nature of “humor” then consider: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/ and https://iep.utm.edu/humor/
[3] G.K. Chesterton, “Humour” (1938) found at https://nonsenselit.com/g-k-chesterton-humour-1938/.  Original source is Chesterton, G.K. The Spice of Life and Other Essays, Edited by Dorothy Collins (Beaconsfield: Darwen Finlayson, 1964)
[4] Chesterton, et.al.
[5] G.K. Chesterton, “Cockneys and Their Jokes” in All Things Considered (1908), accessed from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/All_Things_Considered/Cockneys_and_Their_Jokes
[6] C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters ibid, pg. 215-217
[7] G.K. Chesterton, “Cockneys and Their Jokes” in All Things Considered (1908), accessed from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/All_Things_Considered/Cockneys_and_Their_Jokes
[8] http://www.uky.edu/~jjord0/ArisIII.htm#:~:text=Appetitive%20soul%20%E2%80%93%20This%20is%20the,itself%20a%20faculty%20of%20thought, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-emotions/#:~:text=He%20regarded%20the%20emotions%20as,of%20knowledge%20and%20rational%20will,
[9] https://www.statista.com/statistics/188944/us-consumer-spendings-on-home-entertainment-since-1999/
[10] https://www.statista.com/topics/1536/media-use/
[11] https://www.selectusa.gov/media-entertainment-industry-united-states
[12] https://www.statista.com/statistics/254115/favorite-movie-genres-in-the-us/, https://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-audiences-and-consumption-110704, https://morningconsult.com/2018/11/27/reality-is-americas-least-favorite-tv-genre-yet-people-are-still-watching/, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2007/07/25/what-they-watch-online/

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
1 Corinthians 15:13-19
 
This is perhaps the most unique passage in the entire history of religious texts.  In this passage, the Apostle Paul hangs the entire edifice of Christian faith on a historical event: the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  Understand the strangeness of this.  There is categorically no other religion in the history of Mankind that hangs its entire worldview and truth claims upon the tangibility of a verifiable occurrence in space and time.  You will not get this with Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Scientology, Secular Humanism, or Liberal Christianity.  While all these have origin stories, key founding figures, and calls spiritual wisdom and moral principles, none of them ground their essential doctrines, their whole worldviews, upon a historical event. 
 
Christianity is different.  Christianity starts not with “This is the way you should live,” as all other faith systems do, but with, “Here is what Jesus did in history, that you may live.”   Huge difference. 
 
In the passage above Paul says, “If there is no resurrection of the dead…your faith is in vain” (v. 14).  That word “vain” is the Greek word kenos, which means unreal, empty, without power.[1]  It is getting across the understanding that the faith we have as Christians is impotent, incapable of changing anything if the resurrection is but a useful myth or a mere symbol.  In short, Paul is making clear that Christianity is not less than emotions, but it is not relegated to mere emotions.  He is saying that it does not matter if you feel that the resurrection is true, it does not even matter if you have had a cathartic religious experience about it, and it does not even matter how many Easter sermonettes proclaim the joys of it.  No, he is affirming that if the resurrection did not tangibly happen in space and time, then Christianity is bunk.   The whole Faith is at best a fanciful delusion and at worst the greatest falsified travesty in the chronicles of Humanity. 
 
Easter, therefore, is the pivotal hinge of the Christian Faith.  No Easter, no Christianity. 
 
No Easter, then not only is Christianity bunk but all sense of identity, security, and peace in this life is bunk.  How so?  Well, if Jesus was not raised, then there is no hope beyond the grave, and if there is no hope beyond the grave then there is no objective standard of meaning and purpose in this life except what we conjure up in our three pounds of gray matter between our ears.  Countless Christian and non-Christian thinkers have made this point very forcefully in the history of human thought.[2]  The ardent atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) helps to summarize much of the literature on this when he said,
 
"Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving…. His origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms [and there is] no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, [that] can preserve an individual life beyond the grave… [All the] labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement [will] inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins ….  [It is only] within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."[3]
 
This oxymoronic view of life is what our whole vacuous post-modern culture is about.  It proclaims: “You are an accident, there is no ultimate future, so live life to the fullest and be your best self!”  But we know that this is inane.  Such a “truth” means fundamentally that all our talk of objective “love,” all our fights for “justice,” all our language of “hope” for a brighter future, and all our desires for “identity” are at the bottom laid waste, eaten alive in the face of moral relativism and death. 
 
The electrifying message of Easter guts the absurdity of Russell’s message.  It affirms to us that God has entered history and that through love and justice He laid waste the power of death at the same to renewing our identity and giving us a glorious future.  Because of Easter, history regains objective meaning, our faith is vindicated, our identities are renewed, our purpose is established, and our hope is assured. 
 
THE TANGIBILITY OF THE EMPTY TOMB
This discussion of hope and identity is not emotional jargon, it is grounded in Reality.  Precisely because of the historical reality of the resurrection we can take comfort in the objectivity of our Faith, meaning, and future.  It is vitally important that you understand this Truth and teach it to your children and those around you.
 
The resurrection is as historical an event as Pearl Harbor, Washington crossing the Delaware, or the assassination of Julius Caesar.  Understand this.  There is actual historical evidence for such a claim.  There is a tremendous body of world-renowned scholarship that affirms the historicity of the resurrection and the N.T. writings.[4] I cannot get into the depths of it for sake of brevity but let me sketch out at least three points:
 
The fact that there was an empty tomb – This sounds insignificant, but it is profoundly important.  A tomb is a particularly definable objective geographic location.  This means to disprove the resurrection one need only provide the body of Jesus.  Why didn’t the Romans, the Sanhedrin, or any other skeptics of the time produce such a body?  Answer: Because it wasn’t there.  The fact is all the Gospel writers and many Jewish, Christian, and pagan writers of the time affirmed that the tomb of Jesus was empty.[5] 

The fact that women were the first eyewitnesses – The Gospels claim that the first eyewitnesses were women.  Have you ever thought of the importance of this easily looked over point?  You see women were considered intellectually, emotionally, and morally deficient compared to men.  Because of this their testimonies were not even permitted as acceptable evidence in the court of law in 1st Century Palestine.  As the famed Jewish historian Josephus (37-100 A.D.), who lived at the same time as the N.T. authors, said, 

"But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex, nor let servants be admitted to give testimony on account of the ignobility of their soul; since it is probable that they may not speak truth, either out of hope of gain, or fear of punishment."[6]
 
The point is if you are constructing your own resurrection myth in the 1st Century you would not use women as the chief eye-witnesses to justify your position!  People like Josephus would have disbelieved not merely on resurrection grounds but the fact of the absurdity of believing women to be legitimate witnesses to such an event. 
 
The Gospel writers cited women as the eyewitnesses…because women were the eyewitnesses.  In short, the fact that the Gospel’s record women as the eyewitnesses give historical authenticity to the truthfulness of the account.  If they were liars or mythmakers they would not have crafted a narrative in which people (women) who were considered unreliable were the central sources of establishing the truthfulness of the event.
 
The fact of the transformation of the disciple's beliefs – There is no doubt that the disciples themselves did not have any kind of a religious or cultural understanding about the kind of messianic resurrection Jesus achieved.[7]  They constantly misunderstood His true purposes.  But can we blame them really?  Second Temple Judaism did not have any rabbinical teachings and no theological perspective on a resurrection of a single person amid history, much less the idea that the Messiah would be a dying and rising Savior.  It is important to understand this.  To First Century orthodox Jews the conceptual category of “dying and rising Messiah” did not even exist.  For them, “resurrection” was an eschatological End of Days event for all Jews and the Messiah was to be the political figure who would come to redeem Israel from its oppressors and destroy her enemies.  

The question that deserves much attention then is, “What made these 1st Century Jews transform their entire religious and cultural identities overnight?”  What event could have happened that made these individuals  go from Unitarians to Trinitarians; or go from believing God cannot be a man to God becoming a Man; or go from a political Messiah to a risen Messiah; or go from celebrating the Sabbath on Sunday instead of Saturday; or go from kosher foods to freedom in what one eats?  What could possibly explain all these social, cultural, and religious transformations among masses of people all at once? 
 
Everything in their lives changed.  How so!?!  I would argue that the only viable historical explanation is the one they give.  As the Apostle Peter said,
 
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
2 Peter 1:16
 
And the Apostle John said,
 
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 4 And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
1 John 1:1-4
 
They had such extraordinary transformation because they experienced an extraordinary event: the bodily objective tangible resurrection of their leader Jesus of Nazareth.  If you do not believe this, then you have to come up with some other theory to make sense of all this historical data.  But as the renowned 20th Century N.T. scholar C.F.D. Moule (1908-2007) said,
 
“If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and shape of the Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with? … the birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church therefore remain and unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the Church itself.”[8]
 
In the same vein Shusaku Endo (1926-1996), the famed Japanese Christian novelist and thinker, put it like this,
 
"If you don’t believe in the resurrection, you will be forced to believe that something hit the disciples that was every bit amazing, maybe different, yet of equal force in electrifying intensity. For if you try to explain the changed lives of the early Christians, you will find yourself making leaps of faith every bit as great as if we believed in the resurrection to start with."[9]
 
A HISTORY THAT GIVES US HOPE
It is not enough to go away from this post with historical data about the resurrection.  While this is essential to ground the reality of faith, it is not sufficient to ignite it.  Easter must become more than an event we celebrate, a tradition we relive, or a feeling we have – it must become living and breathing and active.  Therefore, we must keep before us the Reality of the resurrection on the daily.  We must understand that this event in space and time changes all of space and time.  It makes our space sacred, our time sacred, our lives sacred.  As one author said, “The resurrection is not a stupendous magic trick but an invasion.”[10]  It demands our attention, it remakes us into a new creation, and it destroys the powers of insecurity, indifference, and fear in the present and the future. 
 
The Resurrection makes shows us (proves to us) that there is a future that is deeply personal, certain, and wonderful (paraphrasing Timothy Keller’s words in a sermon I heard once).  This means that whatever we do in this life has true lasting impact, it is not burned up into the sea of oblivion as Russell thought.  It means that Love, justice, and relationships transcend their particular moments and have real eternal significance.  It means suffering and evil has a purpose and are only to be tolerated – one day to be vindicated and swept away.  It means that death, the great equalizer, the tyrant of our souls, loses its hold over us – the great irreversibility of life is made reversible.  All of this is achieved because the Resurrection tangibly, historically, happened for us.  Easter actually happened!  I cannot say any better the words of N.T. Wright (1948-present) as I close this post,  
 
"The message of the resurrection is that this world matters!  That the injustices and pains of this present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice and love have won... If Easter means Jesus Christ is only raised in a spiritual sense - [then] it is only about me, and finding a new dimension in my spiritual life.  But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes good news for the whole world - news which warms our hearts precisely because it isn't just about warming hearts.  Easter means that in a world of injustice, violence and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things - and that we will work and plan, with all the energy of God, to implement [the] victory of Jesus over them all.  Take away Easter and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring problems of the material world.  Take it away and Freud was probably right to say Christianity is wish-fulfillment.  Take it away and Nietzche probably was right to say it was for wimps."[11]

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[1] https://biblehub.com/commentaries/1_corinthians/15-14.htm
[2] Consider the works of Blaise Pascal, Søren Kierkegaard, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Frederick Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, H.G. Wells and many others
[3] Bertrand Russell, “The Free Man’s Worship” (1903), Accessed from https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/br-free-mans-worship.html
[4] I would suggest to you but a small collection of works: N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003); Gary Habermas, The Case of the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004); Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010); Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2017); Peter J. Williams, Can we Trust the Gospels? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018); David Beck & Michael Licona, Raised on the Third Day: Defending the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020)
[5] If you want a more meaty discussion on the historicity of the empty tomb then consider: William Lane Craig, “The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus” https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/historical-jesus/the-historicity-of-the-empty-tomb-of-jesus/
[6] Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, 4.219, accessed from https://lexundria.com/j_aj/4.219/wst
[7] N.T. Wright discusses the importance of this in Resurrection of the Son of God, pg. 28-31 and all of Chapter Two
[8] C.F.D. Moule as quoted in John Lennox, Can Science Explain Everything? (United States: The Good Book Company, 2019). Original work is Moule’s The Phenomenon of the New Testament: An Inquiry Into the Implications of Certain Features of the New Testament (United Kingdom: S.C.M. Press, 1967), pg. 13
[9] Quoted in Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 108
[10] Timothy Keller, Hope In Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter (New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2021), pg. xxi
[11] N.T. Wright, For All God's Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church, p. 65-66