Skip to main content

Unbelievable


After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” (Matthew 28:1-7)



          When you write fiction, you can make your story as wild as you want. When you write nonfiction, you have to be careful. Real life is often a lot stranger than the stories you read, but if you try to tell someone the truth, they may not believe you.
            This is why Matthew 28:1-7 is the worst, and best, possible first report of the resurrection. The event was unbelievable in the first place. People don't rise from the dead, well... except for the widow's son (I Kings 17), and the son of the Shunammite (II Kings 4), and the widow's son (Luke 7) and Jairus' daughter (Luke 8) and Lazarus (John 11)... but other than them, people just don't rise from the dead.
            Then, if you did want a true story to be believed, you pick the best possible witnesses: pillars of the community, doctors, university scholars. Especially in that day, you didn't pick women. Women couldn't even testify in court. And if you were going to pick women, you certainly did not pick someone like Mary Magdalene. I mean, get real. The woman was certified as demon-possessed, mad as a hatter, the head loon in a lunatic asylum, nuttier than ...well, you get the picture.
            A third thing you don't do when you want a story to be believed is to reveal that one of the chief actors in the story, one of the people who is proclaiming that it's true - is a liar. Peter wandered around the courtyard for hours, telling everyone who asked that he didn't know Jesus, wasn't one of His disciples (John 18.) Then, within a couple months of saying, "Read my lips, I do not know Him!" he was preaching about Jesus to thousands (Acts 2.)      If you were writing a novel, your readers would enjoy the story. As history, it is unbelievable, and yet the fact that no one in their right mind would concoct such a story expecting to be believed is one of the things that gives this story the "ring of truth."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more