I have a confession to make. I’m a glass-half-empty guy. I don’t recall any particular event that made me that way. No crushing tragedy that I can point to or someone I can blame. It seems that it’s my nature to be so. But perhaps there’s something more to it than my own personality.
If you pressed me on why I tend to look on the dark side of things, maybe it has something to do with the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. I was born in the 1960s into a collapsing civilization, the collapse of which has only accelerated over the course of my life. Civilizational collapse is not a pretty sight for anyone with a philosophical bent. Of course, philosophical reflection is not a prerequisite to experiencing the impact of a civilizational collapse. When the barbarians are scaling the walls and burning your city, even the least reflective man knows he’s in trouble.
But barbarians scaling the walls and burning the city mark not the beginning of a civilization’s collapse but its end. What marks the earlier stages of a collapse is the rejection of truth, the belief in the lie, and decisions based on the lie – things which at the time may have seemed righteous and good and progressive to many - but which eventually and necessarily lead to destruction. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” to quote Proverbs.
As I said, that’s the world I’ve grown up in. And having spent several decades watching one’s civilization collapse a little more every year tends to leave its marks on a man. Today is Easter Sunday 2024, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. What, you may ask, does that have to do with civilizational collapse? If you’ve paid attention to the news over the past week, you may have seen the story that the current president of the United States has declared today, March 31, 2024 “Transgender Day of Visibility.” That this is being done consciously, intentionally, and deliberately to insult Christians is, in my opinion, beyond any doubt. What kind of a nation has a government that goes out of its way to insult Christians on a day they set aside to celebrate the death of death and the hope of eternal life in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? A nation deeply sunk in sin and led by wicked men.
It's at this point where my heart tends to despair. “Everything only gets worse and worse and there’s no hope for the future. Darkness, decay, and death are all we have to look forward to.” That’s not a completely foolish thing to say either. The signs of collapse and decay are all around us. Superstitious and aggressive transgender mania is only one example of the collapse of the once Protestant and civilized West. I want to cry out “Do something!” But it seems that there’s no one able to stem the tide of darkness washing over us all. Apart from faith in Christ Jesus and his cross work, logically there is no reason, none whatsoever, to look on the bright side.
Last week in preparation for a Bible study, I read through Mark’s account of the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. It’s a dark account. Jesus is betrayed and abandoned by his friends. He was arrested by the chief priests who should have believed him, abused by the civil authorities who should have defended him, and mocked by the people who should have praised him. In reading Mark’s account, I wanted to cry out “Do something, Jesus!” “Don’t let these evil men have their way!’ And yet he did nothing. Or at least that’s how it seems at first.
But if we look more carefully at the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Christ, we see that not only did he “do something,” he accomplished exactly what he set out to do. The Apostle John quotes Jesus saying “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it again. This commandment I have received from my Father.” Neither the chief priests, nor Pilate, nor Herod, nor the Roman soldiers had any power over Christ that was not first granted to them so that Christ could complete the work that he came to do. “It is finished,” he said. And indeed, it was.
For there to be a triumphal resurrection, Jesus first had to die. By the grace of God’s revelation, we know that far from doing nothing during the events that led to his death, Jesus was in full control and precisely what he set out to do: become sin for his people, so that they may become the righteousness of God in him.
Only it didn’t seem that way to his disciples. They were in hiding, apparently supposing it was all over for them. Even the women who come to visit his tomb came to embalm a body, not meet a risen Lord. In fact, the only people who seemed to understand what Jesus said about rising from the dead the third day were, oddly enough, his worst enemies. Matthew records that the chief priest and Pharisees came to Pilate to ask him to secure Jesus’s tomb, lest his disciples come and steal his body and hoax everyone by claiming, “Look! He is risen,” when he was dead. Faith is defined as assent (agreement) to an understood proposition. Jesus’s disciples lacked faith in Christ’s resurrection because they failed to understand him. The chief priests and Pharisees, on the other hand, understood Jesus perfectly, but they rejected his claims.
I began this post by talking about being a glass-half-empty guy. I’d like to tell you that if I were in the same position as the disciples, I would have acted differently. I would have believed Jesus and popped right out of bed on Sunday morning and run to see an empty tomb and a risen Lord. But, sadly, I’m sure I wouldn’t have faired any better than the disciples.
But I can tell you this. Jesus Christ gives life to his people. He shows them grace and gives them the gift of faith and the promise of eternal life, though none of them deserve it. He can even save a glass-half-empty guy and give him hope. Christ is risen indeed. Amen.