I found this article through a friends blog. It was written by the #1 columnist at the Chicago Tribune and what a breath of fresh air it is...
No doubt about Easter's true meaning
Published April 16, 2006
It is Easter Sunday for millions of Western Christians. Those of us on the Eastern Orthodox side of Christianity will celebrate next week.
And somehow, whether this week or next, writing about colored eggs and butter lambs and avoiding the Jesus Christ part of it just won't do.
Obviously, I work in the secular media, and we're usually skittish about spiritual matters. But we're quite dogmatic when it comes to some other things. For example, we're almost severe in our collective belief in scientific progress, in the ability of government officials and technology and reason to solve the problems of the modern world. The mention of Christianity, except in an anthropological context, is often avoided. It carries certain risks.
One problem is that you might insult or infuriate those of other faiths, or those who are firm in having no faith, or those who are ambivalent and want to keep it that way. Please, no offense is intended here. I'm no theologian. My sins haunt me, and what they've left behind reminds me that I'm nobody to tell others about what should be in their hearts.
Still this is Easter Sunday for so many of you and the beginning of Holy Week for others like me, and millions upon millions of people are being driven to their knees.
Just think about that. All across the world on Sunday, and again next Sunday, millions of folks will confirm their belief in something that can't be proven by scientific means. That yearning is news, isn't it? Even though it takes place year after year, it's still news.
What drives us to our knees has little to do with cute bunny rabbits and tiny marshmallow chicks. It has little to do with Easter bonnets, or Earth Day. So while reading the papers on Friday, considering this, I glanced at the front page of USA Today.
"Hollywood turns to divine inspiration," said the headline, and above it was a photo of actor Tom Hanks and a French beauty in the new movie "The Da Vinci Code."
I hope the headline about divine inspiration was a pun, since the Hanks film appears to be a response to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." But Hollywood wants inspiration to produce movies that make almost $400 million, as Gibson's did, especially since Hollywood refused to help Gibson with his movie.
Most of you know that the Hanks movie was taken from a badly written book, informed perhaps not by the Holy Sprit, but as conservative writer Tom Roeser said the other day, by feminist politics. Also, that the new Hanks movie involves one of those Jesus conspiracies. In this one, Jesus has a child with Mary Magdalene, the first in a line of French nobles, and conservative Roman Catholics dispatch a crazed albino monk to assassinate anyone who may reveal the big secret.
Recently, there was news that trumpeted the discovery of the so-called Judas gospel. This gospel apparently expiates Judas' guilt. He can't be a betrayer if he and Jesus were allegedly in the conspiracy together. Although early Christian bishops ignored that book, it is being offered, again during the Easter season, as an archeological find, as a goad.
I usually skip such news. The incredible lengths to which the anti-Catholic "Da Vinci Code" has been marketed and the coverage of the Judas gospel as if it were a missing companion to the other four prove me right. It's always so relentless and familiar. It always revolves around the same basic premise:
Doubt.
And doubt sells.
A few months ago, a newsweekly ran a portrait of Jesus on the cover. Such magazines give prominent play to Christian themes in winter and spring, and the portrait was from the Renaissance, and he wore a crown of thorns, and there was this headline:
"How Jesus became the Christ"--as if what happened after the Crucifixion was merely a matter of good public relations.
A friend who worked at one of those magazines had a theory about all of the new Jesus news.
"Jesus saves--circulation," he said.
Surely their numbers don't lie. Casting nagging doubts must drive newsstand sales, or they wouldn't do it.
Some hands that reach for such stuff are thrilled, their own positions validated. Others who don't reach are wounded, wondering why there is so much constant effort made to whittle at belief.
This year is no different. Next year there will be something else. That much is certain. It's been that way for almost 2,000 years. It's always the same, and it goes like this:
A group of strong men rolled the rock away from the tomb, the Resurrection didn't happen, and it defies scientific reason, which is the new church to many.
But in countless other churches, in storefronts and cathedrals, there is a response to such doubt. It comes from the Last Supper, when Christ speaks to his disciples and says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
For those of you who celebrate today, happy Easter.
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jskass@tribune.com
3 comments:
Thanks for posting that newsarticle. As you said it's really refreshing and also very brave of the guy/gal who wrote it in a secular media publication. We need more people in the media like him/her!
Hi Bret,
Great post. I sometimes get sad about all the socalled news. But it is also good to know that it has been like this for over the last 2000 years and it did not keep God from manifesting himself through the ages.
No problem guys. I can't agree with you more that people like him are needed to break the mold of contemporary news. It's essential that people are writing and broadcasting to the general media about the Truth and the Light. It's one thing for Christian radio or Christian publishing to do such things, but a very small percentage are actually reached through such forms of media.
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