In some ways, I think that stating that “Jesus was born to die” minimizes the subversive victory of the story of the Resurrection. If Good Friday brought chaos and uncertainty to his followers, Easter is the reversal of that. It’s Love being elevated over the way of Empire. The Romans do not win. In Hunger Games parlance…he changes the game. Jesus know the possibility that awaited him…but I don’t think it was a foregone conclusion. Part of the power of his story is that he went to his death so calmly. Not because he knew already what all was happening, but because he knew that the death of one would mean the liberation of hundreds. His message and teachings would become that much more powerful.

Historians offer varied accounts for the likely reasons, if one needs something other than common avarice. Unmentioned, in my experience, is that the Abrahamic religions share the story of the father and his son, Isaac, that prohibits the ritual sacrifice of humans. “The ram” can be sacrificed. The human, child or adult, cannot–righteously.

I call myself a “Good Friday Christian,” as that is what I celebrate at the time of the Spring equinox. It is a time to weep for all the innocent who have been put to death: Jesus of Nazareth, to be sure; six million Hebrews two millennia later, again to be sure. No one can be sure how many lives taken under the order of our legal system were undeserving of their punishment. Good Friday betokens how ready we, as righteous, are to take a human life, against all the evidence of our flawed capacity for judgments even far less severe.

I have found no good reason for all those deaths, as no reason can account for the death of Jesus. So I no longer ask why he had to die. He did not have to die, anymore than any of the other innocents. Instead I ask why we are so timid and cowardly in the face of such horror. Why must we have a good reason to object? Otherwise, then, we must face, what? The abyss, as Heidegger names it? Or the absurd, as the secular existentialists name it? Neither the abyss nor the absurd has power to command us. Nor do they offer us a mirror to admire ourselves as did Narcissus in the pool.

While I do not confine myself to the theology of Ecclesiastes, time has certainly showed us the strength of the plaint, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” I do not believe the man who died a criminal’s death, as songster Bob Dylan tells us, died for human vanity. Nor do I believe there is a good reason he died. I do not believe it requires a good reason for one to call himself a Christian. It requires only mere belief.

In other news, I love the essay you’ve written here.

I fell in love with history at a very young age, because of all the heroes and ‘Great Men’ depicted (Where were the ‘Great Women’?) and all their ‘Great Deeds.’

I now am much more in love with ‘social / cultural history’ and (in my search for helpful present-day analogies) have become an avid follower of pop culture, sports, and technology.

I am also fascinated with the ways people live out, use, and/or understand religion. So you can be sure I’ll be coming back to your blog again and again.

(There’s plenty to read, even if you were to update it only once or twice this year. So whatever you do, I wish you the best.)

I try to turn being a beggar into a strength, but feel I need to keep it to myself. That is to say, I still pray, long after being disabused of all notions that prayers are answered. I feel weakness in the face of the barterers who have something to trade for whatever it is they want. And I will play their game out of necessity most of the time. But I long for a time when we honored beggars (as they still do in Asia) by freely giving what they require. I have never personally known persons with such a vocation, although a few passing contacts have given me a little first-hand information.

Stories of the uncanny human capacities evidenced by historic figures (and contemporaries as in Somalia) humble my arrogance. Thank you.

I think you’re half right. Stories don’t change people’s beliefs, but people do. It’s easy to believe in the justice of condemning a theoretical, unknown, and villainized person, but it’s much more difficult to condemn an actual person who is sitting in front of you and with whom you have a genuine connection. It’s not the sharing of the information that’s effective, it’s the sharing of the person. And as far as I can tell, it’s the most effective means of bridge building that we have.