Resurrection 20/20

Tonight on ABC’s 20/20 there was a show about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I watched it with my parents, which provides an interesting dynamic.  I’m an atheist, and my parents are both Christian.

I know a lot more about the Bible due to my intense interest in the subject, even with (or perhaps because of) my lack of faith.

The show was…mediocre. There was a lot of time spent showing churches and their choirs singing some praise Jesus song.  From some hippy-type church in California, to some black baptist type church somewhere else.  I believe at one point an entire song was played – not as background, but as all the show was showing at that point.

The topic of the resurrection of Jesus is fascinating, and I think on many more levels than most people realize.  There are a number of levels of questions that have to be satisfied before people end up believing what they end up believing, and most of the time, they make jumps in places that they don’t realize they are jumping around in.

For example, the 20/20 lady was asking the theologians of various faiths about "so what if Jesus did physically resurrect?"

The answers seemed to the theologians fairly obvious – then there’s an afterlife; Jesus is God; at least one way of getting there is by believing in Jesus (probably)…

But I have no idea how those ideas are connected.  I mean, I understand why people connect the two, but I don’t get why they are.

If Jesus had the power of an all-powerful God, then his "big finish" certainly wasn’t all that impressive.  As stated in other places, he could have written his message in a 3-d arrangement of the stars across billions of light-years, readable only from the Earth…that would have demonstrated his power over things beyond the VERY LOCAL Jerusalem area.

So if Jesus "resurrected" as far as we could tell, he could have been some kind of local deity, or some demon, easily.  And just because he resurrected himself (or something else resurrected him – how would we tell the difference if we’re assuming the supernatural realm is possible), how does this have any bearing on whether WE as humans have a soul or an afterlife.

Clearly, by having this alleged power, Jesus is something very different than human. What makes us think that ANY of the usual heuristics can be used to judge Jesus accurately on any level?

"He did good things" or "He taught moral things" – perhaps that’s what a Jesus creature does just before devouring the world in fire, who knows? Seriously, if Jesus had the power that Christians claim he has, then we have NO REFERENCE point with which to say anything meaningful about him.  How old was he? Who knows? Who could know?

But these things are kind of glossed over for the most part.  People question whether Jesus resurrected or not – when even if you grant the case that He did; there is still SO MUCH that is left unknown or unknowable as to make it incredible that anyone could be a Christian.