Empty Tomb: "How Can You Believe In the Resurrection?"

One of the first times  that I decided to talk back to an atheist hate talker online was so long ago that I don't even remember where it happened.  It was in response to someone in the course of a long diatribe against Christians and religion, when he mocked The Resurrection as a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Now, the Second Law of Thermodynamics isn't a simple thing to comprehend, I only have a slight understanding of it.   I would be curious to know if any of the scientists who have the best understanding of it would claim to understand everything about it in every way.  I doubt one with any philosophical sophistication - perhaps a minority of present day physicists - would make such a rash and premature claim about anything.

I don't know a lot about The Second Law of Thermodynamics, I do know it doesn't claim that it's impossible that a miracle could be done by God, that the work of omnipotence entirely outside of the normal course of events can't happen.  As careful science it wouldn't address anything like that nor could it even if an honest scientist wanted to use it for that since such an intervention would not be within the thing that science does cover, the normal, typical way that things happen in the physical universe.  That is especially true of science entirely reliant on the statistical evaluation of large numbers of similar events to find out what is typical of such events, even casual outliers in the data thrown out.

Only a person really ignorant of what science is and what it can and cannot do would make the claim that The Resurrection of Jesus, as described in the Gospels and the statements of the first generation of the followers of Jesus can be addressed with science.  Science couldn't address The Resurrection short of making an absolutely positive identification of the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, complete with evidence of The Crucifixion.   How such an identification could be made without equally problematic identification of members of his family for comparison only needs to be stated and not asked.  The answer is obvious.

Not only do I admit to not understanding much about The Second Law of Thermodynamics, I also will admit that I don't understand The Resurrection.   I certainly don't rule it out on the basis of some faux scientific assertion but I can't claim that the idea isn't pretty hard to take.  Nor do I think it's supposed to be easy to take.  I used to hold that the entire idea of vicarious atonement just seemed wrong, that one person, even the Son of God, was, by his death taking on the entire burden of sin for people who included those who were killing him and those who violated every one of his teachings even as they made a mockery of the name of Jesus and the title "Christ".

To take a short detour for a purpose, a passage from The Book of Ezekiel in the Easter Vigil Liturgy describes what such "Christians" do quite well.

"they defiled it by their conduct and deeds..."

"...because of the blood that they poured out on the ground, 
and because they defiled it with idols."

those idols being mostly money and power, these days, the blood shed for them the same, though in vastly more quantity and by drone and bomb as well as knives and swords.  And, in the United States, in many places, the person doing that defiling and pouring out blood on the ground call themselves "Christians." When Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Phil Robertson and hundreds of other corporate media defilers and blood pourers perform the most blatant blasphemy of invoking the identity of Jesus and the God of the Prophets.  

The wonder is that anyone who had ever read the words of Jesus and the Prophets and who really believed them wouldn't be more moved to condemn their hypocrisy and slander than they are so conspicuously not moved to.  That silence is more troubling than what the FOX camp and related anti-Christians are doing, though it is true that the American corporate media would probably suppress anyone who did expose them.   If I don't know much about the Resurrection, I do know that you can't believe what Jesus said and claim that he said the opposite of what he did at the same time.  And that you can't read what Jesus said and come up with what Coulter or Robertson do without knowingly lying about what you read.

In the last few weeks, during Lent and into Easter I thought about The Crucifixion, the issue of vicarious atonement and The Resurrection and something occurred to me that I'd never thought of before.  In the way it had been presented to me the death of Jesus like the wages of sin are like blood sacrifices, tribute exacted by God to satisfy some desire of God.   But I really wonder if that's not putting the reason for it in the wrong place.  People are the ones with needs, not God, people are very stubborn and hardhearted, hard to impress and hard to convince, especially when selfishness and self interest aren't served by effective belief.  All through The Bible, even as those privileged to be shown such things are  shown signs and wonders and evidence, even among the Apostles of Jesus, the constantly chosen choice to doubt and disbelieve seems to require the ultimate demonstration, the most extreme demonstration before it will be accepted in an effective way.   Worth thinking about is this farther into the same text from Ezekiel:

I will sprinkle clean water upon you
to cleanse you from all your impurities, 
and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, 
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.
I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, 
careful to observe my decrees.

I doubt that anything less than the sacrificial death of the Son of God would make any widespread and deeply effective impression on the hard and unnatural hearts of people.  The daily and casual sacrifice of huge numbers of children, women, men, entire biospheres of animals makes no impression that stops the pouring of blood on the ground.   We're certainly no better, atheist or "Christian" than the people in the blood soaked, oppressing books of The Bible mistaken as modern history by too many people.

The idea that people are made with the ability to decide to do bad things as part of their existing as real, full, individuals is persuasive, as I find it to be persuasive,  if God was willing to go that far, making us capable of disobeying God, of doing wrong, in order to make us as we are, in order for us to be fully individual, then the idea that God would go as far as necessary to persuade us to choose what was good also makes sense to me.   It's not actual and full belief in the Resurrection as described in the Gospels, different accounts that exhibit different understandings of the event by individual people, it is my attempt to make sense of it, for me, perhaps for other people.   I don't think my understanding of it would ever be complete, nor do I think the understanding of any of those who wrote the accounts in the Gospel are complete understanding of that unique event, thus the differences.  It's part of the Catholic tradition I was raised in to see the most profound events in life as essentially mysterious, beyond understanding, even beyond acceptance in this life.   If this thinking will lead me to a fuller belief in the Resurrection, I don't know.   It certainly does make me want to get better at following the teachings of Jesus, so it's probably worth it.

I have to say, listening online to the Deacon at Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston sing the Exultet, in English on Saturday night, really got to me.

O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son! O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!  O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!