Dead men do not rise!
Many times in my life, I’ve been angry and frustrated with God. I’ve wanted to stop being a Christian. I’ve experienced doubts. But I’ve only rarely doubted the facts.
One time I did was in my third year at university. I was studying Philosophy as part of my course, and I left a session with one of the lecturers with serious questions about whether or not Jesus rose from the dead.
The problem the lecturer posed me, and that I struggled with, was this: no amount of evidence should ever make you believe in something that’s impossible. If something’s impossible, then even if the evidence for it is strong, it can’t be true. Pigs don’t fly. So if you see a pig in the sky, then even if it looks just like a pig, you must be mistaken. It must be a balloon painted to look like a pig, or a very oddly shaped cloud in red sunlight. Pigs just can’t fly, so it certainly isn’t a pig.
In the same way, even if there’s really strong evidence that Jesus rose, it can’t have happened because dead people just can’t rise.
It’s a powerful argument. It really shook me. But after a while, I realised that the argument assumes that a man rising from the dead is impossible. It starts off by believing that it’s impossible, and then it concludes that it obviously didn’t happen. But this is the opposite of being open-minded. It’s like deciding one day that it’s impossible for a dog to bark. If you decide to believe that, then every time you hear a dog bark, you won’t believe it. It must have been a car back-firing. It must have been an mp3 recording of a bark. It must have been a human doing an impression of a bark. You would conclude that it is just coincidence that whenever you hear a bark, there’s always a dog nearby with its mouth open. This is what happens when you assume that something is impossible.
Obviously, there’s a big difference between assuming dogs can’t bark and assuming dead people can’t rise! Lots of biology suggests the dead can’t rise, while no biology suggests dogs can’t bark.
But if God does exist, then he controls biology. That means he can overrule biology. If there is a God, he can raise the dead. And you would expect it to be a very, very rare thing, rather than an everyday kind of thing. In fact, it would be a great way for God to show us that a particular man is particularly special—that he is, in fact, God himself.
If there’s even a possibility that God exists, there’s a possibility that a man could rise from the dead. So it’s open-minded to listen to the evidence; and the evidence is strong. It may seem unlikely; but if every other explanation is more unlikely, or simply impossible, then you’re left with… Jesus rising.
So if you’re not at all convinced about Jesus rising from the dead, it’s worth looking at the events of what we now call Easter Sunday, and asking yourself:
“What do I have to believe in order to not believe Jesus rose from the dead?”
And then ask yourself if what you do believe is more unlikely, more far-fetched, than God raising a man from the dead.
About six years after that lecturer made me doubt, I heard he was ill with cancer. I wrote him a letter saying I’d enjoyed his teaching and trying gently to tell him more about Jesus. I got no reply, but later learned that he died. I really hope he changed his mind. Otherwise, death defeated that man because he ignored the man who defeated death.
A real happy ending
I hope I’ve made it clear that there are lots of good reasons to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. But… so what?
There are many reasons why Jesus rising from the dead is important. Open the New Testament, the second part of the Bible, at a random page and you’ll probably find a few. Here are just some:
And, wonderfully, Jesus rising means that we don’t need to be worried about death. Shortly after my father died, I sent an e-mail out to some friends, containing these words spoken by the risen Jesus:
“Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death.” - Revelation 1 v 17-18
Jesus is saying he has defeated death and holds its keys. It’s as if death is a dungeon in which we are all prisoners, and Jesus has the key. In fact, Jesus is the key.
That’s why, though death is painful, I don’t fear it, and you don’t need to either. Life can have a happy ending, and it’s no fairytale. It’s based on historical, wonderful, true fact.
This is an extract from Tricky: The hardest questions to ask about Christianity (and some answers), which is out on 10th November and is available to pre-order HERE.
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.