Easter!

Hope you had a blessed one, whatever you got up to this past weekend.  I'm not the most religious of people, but I thought it would be a good time to share my thoughts on religion at this time.

Firstly a brief background story, so that you have an idea of where I come from.  My late Father was devout Catholic and my mother is a baptised Jehovah's Witness who spends 30+ hours every month in active door-to-door preaching.  It was in this denominational mix that I grew up in, firstly attending mass with my dad until about 9 when I started congregating regularly with the Witnesses.  I wouldn't say Catholics and Witnesses are polar opposites, but they certainly do have gaping doctrinal differences which I won't go into for lack of space and time. What I will state is that it has a lot to do with my religious apathy.


What do we know?  History and archaeology tell us there was indeed a certain Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth, a Jew, who lived some 2000 years ago and traversed the land of Palestine for 3 years preaching a new lifestyle and way of life, gaining thousands of followers as a result before being put to death by the Jewish clergy and the Roman authorities for sedition. That is fact. 

What do we believe? Well, this is where things become a little bit trickier.  The Bible contains four books detailing the life and times of aforementioned Jesus the Christ.  There a lot of things that certainly raise the sceptics eyebrow: born of a virgin, healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding thousands on scraps of a bread and a few fish, executed and miraculously resurrected three days later and everything in between.  How much of that one literally believes is, in my opinion, a personal matter. 

There was once a point in life when I had completely given up on the concept of there being a God.  Thankfully, I don't share this view anymore.  I can't explain why I believe.  I can't say how much of the Bible is historical fact and I can't point out the exaggerations or the half-truths. 

A couple years ago the Ghanian writer Edem Djokotoe wrote a story in his usual column in the Post Newspaper. This was a time where the was a story making the rounds about a guy with a Hummer who was infecting girls with some very strange disease. Edem in his article pointed out that this was probably a fabricated story, but with a positive moral message i.e. ladies, your taste for the good life could cost you miserably. I've come to approach the Bible in a similar way.  I don't think its fair to pick every single detail and say such-and-such miracle or occurrence is scientifically impossible.  As a whole, as a book that teaches us a lot about how we ought to live our lives, its a great work. 

Jesus famously once talked about rich people and camels and needles (Matthew 19:24) and entering the Kingdom of the heavens.  This to me is and will always be an extremely important Scripture for the cause of Christianity.  I think what the man meant was (and this is very abstract): knowing human nature, when things are good we don't feel like we need any help at all.  But when things start to go south, we become very prayerful and remember God.  And its not necessarily physical riches or material wealth.  It could be health or happiness or a whole bunch of things.  When we have those things, we feel contentedly invincible.  Take one away and we very quickly remember our Creator.  As such, it is difficult for a physically content person to be overly religious and spiritual in his outlook.

I hope I've made a little sense in this.  I'm still tryna really get the hang of this whole writing thing.  Please remember to pray and to be good to the people around you.