The Great Easter Lie
Resurrection Sunday & Paganism
I have a terrible struggle coming to terms with why pastors,
knowing what we know about Who Jesus is and what this—the most
holy of days on the Christian calendar—represents, still choose
to wallow in ignorance. I can’t believe pastors still allow
Easter egg hunts. It’s disgusting. Just calling the day “Easter”
blasphemes God.
Satan hates Resurrection Sunday. That’s why we have bunnies and
brightly colored eggs and baby chicks and grass and flowers and
other signifiers of fertility rites. This is classic Satan:
pretty-up sin. This stuff absolutely stinks in God’s nostrils,
but we find it charming. Harmless. Cute. We run out and buy
Easter clothes. Easter baskets for our kids. I can at least
understand the lazy Christian who does not study or even who
does not read the bible at all. But there is no excuse
whatsoever—none—for our ignorant pastors. Any pastor who
embraces this “Easter” nonsense is simply unworthy of his call.
He is fooling himself and his flock who are themselves too
ignorant to call the pastor out on this issue: this affront to
the cross. If your church calls this day “Easter,” your pastor
is wallowing in ignorance. If your church is having an Easter
Egg hunt or Easter Egg roll, your pastor is wallowing in
ignorance.
Your pastor either does not know or is too weak to do anything
about it. I also have to imagine some pastors stick with this
abomination out of sheer stubbornness. This Is What We’ve
Always Done. Still other pastors just never give stuff like
this any thought. These pastors are on autopilot: never
questioning, never examining. On cruise control, just collecting
a paycheck without ever examining or reexamining their
convictions.
I've heard it argued that continuing with Easter traditions and
other holiday traditions is a means of evangelism, and that it
is okay to use these pagan traditions because the unsaved are
going to observe them anyway, so the opportunity is there to win
souls to Christ. To become all things that we might win some.
Which is faulty, dangerous and corrupt thinking. Compromising
your belief system in the name of winning new converts to that
belief system you are compromising is simply absurd. The ends,
beloved, do not justify the means. Putting a huge EASTER banner
outside your church, when you know the word “Easter” is derived
from pagan worship (see below), attempts to win folks to a
religion you knowingly undermine. “If I put the term
‘Resurrection Sunday’ on a sign, how many people will know what
that is? Nobody,” a pastor told me. “If I put the word ‘Easter’
on a sign, how many people know what that is? Everybody.”
I’d rather sit in an empty building by myself than to slander
the God I worship by reducing Him to the status of Just Another
God. By that way of thinking, why not offer Christian Porn. You
want to win souls to Christ? You want to fill up the pews
Sunday? Open a Christian Hooters. Why stop with Easter bunnies?
Why not invite Playboy bunnies into your worship system? There
is absolutely no significant difference between an Easter bunny
and a Playboy bunny: both are abominations unto God.
Therefore, my dear friends, flee from
idolatry.
20 … the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God,
and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You
cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you
cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of
demons. —I Corinthians 10:14, 20-21
Long before Easter became the holiday it is today, the spring
festival was celebrated by people around the world. Although
associated with the sun and the Vernal Equinox, the Easter
celebration was originally based on the lunar calendar. The name
Easter is derived from the Saxon Eostre (which is synonymous
with the name of the Phoenician Goddess of the Moon, Astarte), a
Germanic goddess of spring and the deity who measured time. A
Jewish festival, Purim, also celebrated in the spring, has as it
central character and heroine, Esther who, as queen, kept the
evil Haman from killing her people. Even the very word moon
derives from the Sanskrit mas or ma, meaning “to measure.”
Many
scholars have suggested that the reason that the moon was chosen
by the ancients as the way to measure time was the link between
the female cycle and the cycle of the moon. A lunar month of 28
days gave 13 periods in 364 days, which was the solar equivalent
of 52 weeks. The ancient Hebrews had long followed a lunar
calendar, as had most other ancient cultures. Thus humans could
match their natural lives with the nature of the night sky above
them.
As Christianity grew and spread throughout the world, it was
common practice to adopt, modify, convert or take over existing
non-Christian festivals, sacred locations and even names, and
assimilate them into the Christian theology. The Romans used
this method of cultural absorption for centuries as a way of
expanding and firming up the Empire. Given the fact that
Christianity had its roots in Roman ways, it is not surprising
that the same technique was used to spread belief in Christ. The
best example of this was in ancient Britain where the bearers of
the Cross built their churches and monasteries on the very sites
where far more ancient rites had been held.
Because Eostre, also know as Ostara, was the goddess of spring
and her symbolism dealt with renewal and rebirth, the Christian
belief in the resurrection of Christ fit well with those themes.
The connection between Christ's Resurrection and Jewish
Passover, which, in addition to the dramatic story of the flight
from Egypt, also contains elements of a spring celebration, made
the merging of the two religious traditions easily accomplished.
Easter is about bunnies and candy
and baby chicks and pagan fertility rites. Resurrection Sunday
is about an innocent and sinless man Who was brutally tortured
and lynched, rusted iron spikes driven through His hands and
feet. A Man punished for our crimes—yours and mine—Who suffered
unimaginable pain and agony, stretched wide and using all of His
diminishing strength to push back against sharp splinters in an
effort to raise his body enough to expand his lungs to breathe.
A Man Who was abandoned by God, the only Man in all creation
from Whom God turned away His face. And Who ultimately gave up
His life, dying, abandoned and alone, for us.
He wasn’t dead three days. He was crucified at 4:00 P.M. on the
first day, and soldiers came to break His legs to prevent Him
from pushing His body up to breathe, Breaking His legs would
hasten His death before the Sabbath began at sundown. Only, when
the soldiers arrived, they found Him to be already dead.
Criminals in those days lost their right to a proper burial and
the Romans would have thrown His body on the garbage dump
outside the city. Instead, Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy and
honored member of the Jewish council, went to Pilate and asked
for permission to have His body so he could give it a decent
burial (John 19:50-52). This was a stand that could have cost
Joseph dearly. He was a secret disciple of Jesus (John 19:38).
Joseph and Nicodemus, another secret disciple, took Jesus from
the cross and carried His body to a new tomb that was likely
Joseph’s. This tomb was prepared in a garden near Golgotha and
one in which no man had been laid before (vv. 53-56). It was
likely a man-made cave cut out of one of the many limestone
hills in the area around Jerusalem. Such a tomb was large enough
to walk into. They carefully wrapped Jesus’ body in long strips
of cloth, pouring in a mixture of myrrh and aloes (John 19:39).
Both of these spices were obtained from trees and were
expensive. It states in the book of John that Nicodemus
contributed about a hundred pound weight of these spices, which
was an amount fit for royalty. (1)
The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw
the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and
prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath {the Second Day)
they rested according to the commandment. [Luke 22:55-56]
On the morning of the Third Day, the women returned intending to
further prepare Jesus’ body for long-term burial. They were
greeted there by an angel whose glorious countenance frightened
them. But the angel told them to not be afraid, for he had been
sent with good news. Jesus was alive, just as He’d predicted.
The angel invited the women to come and see the place where
Jesus had laid.
I once walked into church and found Easter eggs on the communion table.
The children’s ministry director was handing out rewards and surprises, using the communion table—with the Bible open on it—as, well, a table. Toys, trinkets, papers, notes, water bottle—whatever the leader needed—were piled on top of the large, decorative bible. Literally tossed onto the open pages of Psalms. And, adding perhaps the ultimate insult to the ultimate injury, next to the Bible, on the table of sacrament—a carton of brightly colored plastic Easter eggs. Colorful plastic eggs filled with candy for the children, amassed on the table whose single purpose is to signify the unquantifiable suffering of our Lord, His body broken for us, His blood shed for our sin. And when I spoke to the senior pastor about it, he defended the practice, saying, "We no longer set tables before God," an incomprehensibly stupid point of view, but this was a guy who routinely took the opposite view of any opinion I had, no matter how indefensible his position. This was a guy more invested in winning than in ministering, a guy who could be taught nothing, who could learn nothing, who could never be wrong. And this is how ignorant we are. How foolish we are. Now, a communion table is not magic, is not sacred. There's nothing uniquely special about the wood itself. But what that table represents is the very core of our belief system. and while I think Church Folk tend to go overboard, treating the communion table like a religious talisman (and thus offending God, Who explicitly condemns the worship of objects (or statues—note Catholicism), seeing these pagan symbols casually displayed upon it offended me terribly.
Your eggs and your rabbits and your pagan practices demean and impugn the dignity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So does your gossiping, your backbiting, your pettiness, your meanness, your Church Folk foolishness. Roll your eyes and call me extreme if you want, your idolatry spits on the cross of Calvary and crucifies Christ over and over again. because We've Always Done It doesn't make it right. Mama 'Nem may not have known any better, but we do. And we are held to account for this grave insult to a God we presume to worship. We who call ourselves "Christian" need to tighten up our game and insist our leaders do the same. If we're unwilling to honor God, too busy getting our hair done to be bothered studying and learning, then we really should stop insulting God further by running around using His name.
Christopher J. Priest
1 April 2007/3 April 2011
(1) Includes excerpt
from FamileTimes.Net
editor@praisenet.org
TOP OF PAGE
