There was a hot blog yesterday that was dealing with this whole “Jesus is dead, we have his grave to prove it” thing. I went there and was reading the comments. A few good comments of defense amid a myriad of idiotic, or irrelevant Christian responses, one person even brought evolution into it which is pointless in this instance.

Let us leave things like the incredulity of the Archaeological establishment about this tomb as found here and here aside. What really makes me sad is the glee with which the Atheists decided to trash Christianity. It feels like they want so badly to believe in nothing that they will jump on whatever bandwagon shuts down the most affrontive religion to exist. While doing what they accuse the Christians of doing: Not thinking through what they are saying.

I think the main thing that was ignored at the Urban Semiotic blog was the little detail that Christianity was heavily persecuted by the Jewish authorities in Roman controlled Israel. If you have a group of people preaching Christ crucified and resurrected, as they were preaching in the first century A.D., than the easiest thing to do is pull out the body or say “we have the grave right here”. They didn’t. What does this mean? If in the first 100 years after Christs death the movement he started exploded, even though it was founded on his resurrection, he must have come back. If in the face of massive opposition the disciples managed to convince people that Jesus truly ascended, and no one could bring out a body to say otherwise, than you have your case. If the Anitchristians in the same Era that Jesus lived couldn’t produce a body, I find it difficult to believe anyone 2000 years later can.

There is the old argument about how the disciples hid the body, leaving aside that it took at least six men to set a stone in front of the Roman guarded grave let us look at how these disciples died.
Peter – Crucifixion
Andrew – Crucifixion
James – Executed by the Sword
John – Old Age
Philip – Crucifixion
Bartholomew – Flayed alive than crucified (Ironically tradition maintains that his original name was Jesus, which he changed, apparently it was a pretty common name for the time)
Thomas – Killed in India by Spear of a pagan priest.
James – Crucified or just Martyred
Matthew – Martyred
Simon – Death by Saw
Matthias – Either Crucified or Stoned and Beheaded
Paul – Beheaded
These are how those who supposedly hid the body died. They died for preaching the message of this messiah. Wouldn’t it be a bit counter-intuitive to die for a message you made up?

I guess I’ve learned three things out of this whole story. The first is that there are Atheists who are just as pompous and rude as some of us Christians can be. The second is that Christians need to be trained in how to argue properly. I felt misrepresented by some of the unreasoned or just straight up ignorant comments that were made by Christians. The third thing is more of a reaffirmation of what I currently believe. Christianity is a reasonable religion, but we are not in an age where it is spread through reason. The only way Christianity has a hope of surviving in the modern west is through you and me (I’m assuming you are a Christian here) getting our acts together and start living the way Jesus asked us to. I’m just as, if not more, guilty than anyone else of being a hypocrite. I thank God everyday that I don’t believe in a God who expects perfection, but actually preempted my screwing things up by making things right when he died, then rose again, 2000 years ago.