Resurrection

“…that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” 1 Co 15:4

The seventeen-year-old boy with long dark hair was charged with the responsibility of pushing the bottom that sent his mother’s body to be cremated, which he did with the greatest sadness and reluctance. I walked away from the scene quietly to avoid witnessing the inevitable. It was so final and cruel.

My dad wasn’t there, even though his body was still there in the main room of our country home. I was exhausted when I got home after twenty plus hours of flying and hardly had enough emotional energy to deal with all the things involved in the Buddhist funeral. Nothing was more final than the final moment when the workers lowered my father’s casket and covered it with fresh dirt.

Death takes a thousands forms but its color and texture are always the same. It’s so dark and dense that we hardly can look at it without having a sense of oppression and repulsiveness. I just wanted the whole thing to end while I was there, but it would never end. The ritual was over in a day or two and the sorrow might have sunk to the bottom of one’s heart, but that’s where it would remain forever.

“Jesus wept.” The shortest verse in the Scriptures resonates in our hearts a lot louder and longer than all the other verses. Resurrection was never a doubt for Christ, but the agonizing process of death still caused the Son of God to weep openly. There was no need to weep over the dead man’s death since he was going to raise him up moments later, was there?

Death is death and any effort to beautify it is laughable and unnecessary. Why do we coin it as a “celebration of life,” not a “mourning for the dead?” What is there to celebrate? I wonder. We may be trying to “rejoice always” so hard that we have forgotten how to mourn and, consequently, we do neither very well.

That particular burial wasn’t final at all. In fact, that was the only burial in human history that wasn’t final. He was wrapped from head to toe and was placed in a cave and nobody, even his closest disciples, was expecting Christ would come back to life again. It was all good and interesting when the issue of resurrection was brought up and discussed casually in their small circle, but not a single one of them believed it in practice or in reality. I am afraid we may fare no better compared to all of them. Fantasy and reality will always collide if we consider our belief merely fantastic, which may be the case in many ways.

I sometimes think about the two babies that we lost in miscarriages and wonder whether we will get to see them someday. Unfortunately I have found it very difficult negotiating between theology and reality, theory and practice.

In Vain

“Otherwise, you have believed in vain.”
1 Co 15:2

“What if all these things turn out to be false?” “Will all the time and energy that I have invested in my religion be in vain?” I sometimes question myself.

“What would have been the alternative if I had chosen not to commit my life to Christ and to his cause?” I try to come up with an answer from a purely pragmatic perspective. “Would my life have been more satisfactory and fulfilling had I not followed the Lord?”

There is no possible way for me to figure out all the things that might have occurred had I chosen another course of life, but I can at least make a knowledgeable guess by looking at the lives of some of my peers whose world and life view and ambition for life was similar to mine before I knew Christ and how their lives have turned out. A few of them have become successes in their academic pursuits and, with reasonable effort and luck, I might have turned out to be just like them. They are professors in literature who are most likely similar to most college professors I have come in contact whose lives I had absolutely no desire to emulate. Would I trade my life and beliefs in for theirs? This is a silly question, isn’t it?

Don’t most of us consider our lives ideal? Perhaps not most, but some do. We have no right to place other people’s lives on a balance and determine their value as such. Some homeless people in the city of Los Angeles may be perfectly happy and content and who is to say their quality of life is inferior to that of other people.

If, for some reason, Christ turns out to be false and there is absolutely nothing beyond the portals of death, I am still victorious because I have lost nothing by leading a Christian lifestyle, since I believe being a Christian is the most joyful and fulfilling life, far better than a pagan lifestyle. I know this to be true since I have experienced both. The pleasure of sin pales greatly compared to the joy of the Lord.

Am I intellectually honest? How do you know that you, like millions of people in the world, are merely superstitious and believe in pipe dreams? This isn’t the case, for I have considered the alternative and it is utterly bizarre and discreditable. The Darwinian evolutionist insists that I am material and nothing more. However, I believe, albeit not entirely intellectually, but emotionally and spiritually, that I am far beyond material since I have the amazing ability to love and to write beautiful poetry. This earthen vessel may not be very impressive looking, but it surely can do a lot great things that my next of kin in the evolutionary process have never dreamt of doing, if they dream at all.

You may claim that I have wasted my life by being a fanatic about the Lord, but just let me be fanatically joyful and, contrary to what you may think, I am not envious of your life.