Christianity and Easter - Resurrection a historical question - by Gary Cymbaluk
"More than once, while talking about Easter, friends have confided, "I have a hard time believing in God when there is so much suffering," or "I can't take the stories in the Bible literally." While it is true that there is a lot of suffering in the world and the miraculous stories are astounding, I usually respond by asking this question: Did Jesus come back from the dead? This question usually takes awhile to process but it has enormous implications. If Jesus rose from the dead, then everything he said matters and has significance. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then Christianity doesn't mean squat. I remind my friends this is not a philosophical question, it is a historical one.
Many suppose that our scientific age takes the claims about the resurrection with a healthy dose of skepticism that was missing in the first century. Back then, they were unsophisticated and accepted the idea of a bodily resurrection without question. Yet, that is not accurate. To all the major world views of the time, an individual bodily resurrection was nearly inconceivable. In fact, after the resurrection of Jesus the entire Christian community adopted a set of beliefs that had never occurred to anyone and until that point had been unthinkable. Hundreds of Jews suddenly began to worship Jesus literally overnight.
While nothing in the past can be proven the way we can prove it in a laboratory, the resurrection of Jesus is a historical event that has more support than other historical events we take for granted. Every attempt to account for the birth of the early Christian church, outside of the resurrection, runs against the facts of what we know about the beliefs of the ancient world. Each year at Easter, Christian churches proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the event that defines Christianity. Without it, Christianity offers no hope, no truth and no life.
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