Out of Body Experience

May 25, 2012 By scotmcknight 30 Comments

From Salon.com: (by Mario Beauregard)

What do you think this sort of experience tells us about immortality? resurrection? theology?

Pam was brought into the operating room at 7:15 a.m., she was given general anesthesia, and she quickly lost conscious awareness. At this point, Spetzler and his team of more than 20 physicians, nurses, and technicians went to work. They lubricated Pam’s eyes to prevent drying, and taped them shut. They attached EEG electrodes to monitor the electrical activity of her cerebral cortex. They inserted small, molded speakers into her ears and secured them with gauze and tape. The speakers would emit repeated 100-decibel clicks—approximately the noise produced by a speeding express train—eliminating outside sounds and measuring the activity of her brainstem.

At 8:40 a.m., the tray of surgical instruments was uncovered, and Robert Spetzler began cutting through Pam’s skull with a special surgical saw that produced a noise similar to a dental drill. At this moment, Pam later said, she felt herself “pop” out of her body and hover above it, watching as doctors worked on her body. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Resurrection 30 Comments

Easter Faith

April 8, 2012 By scotmcknight 8 Comments

Brian LePort has an excellent set of reflections on the importance of the resurrection. In short, no resurrection, no faith.

In a recent interview with Sam Hailes for Christian.co.uk (see “People have very odd ideas about Jesus”) N.T. Wright was asked this question:

You’ve argued strongly that Jesus physically rose from the dead as a historical event. Do you have to believe this teaching in order to be a Christian?

He gave this answer:

“Anyone who is in any sense a Christian cannot with any consistency believe that Jesus stayed dead. I have friends and colleagues who I know to be praying Christians who worship regularly and lead lives of practical Christian love and service but who really struggle with the bodily resurrection. I would say that looks like a muddled Christian who needs to be put straight. Of course some of them would say exactly that about me!

“But if you say Jesus died and nothing happened but the disciples had some interesting ideas, then you have cut off the branch on which all classic Christianity is sitting. This generation needs to wake up, smell the coffee and realise serious Christianity begins when Jesus comes out of the tomb on Easter morning. This is not a nice optional extra for those who like believing in funny things.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Resurrection 8 Comments

Easter and a Celtic Knot

April 8, 2012 By scotmcknight 1 Comment

From my piece at Relevant:

Anyone who has gone to church for any amount of time has likely noticed a strange phenomenon around Good Friday and Easter. Depending on what kind of church, one of two things probably happened.

One, at a Good Friday service, which is supposed to be a somber reflection on the death of Jesus, the minister instead figuratively winked at the congregation and ignored the pain and humiliation of the cross, with a proclamation of, “Jesus died … but the story doesn’t end there!” before a choir burst into a giant chorus of “Up from the Ground He Arose.” The meaning was clear: Sure, the death of Jesus was important, but there’s no point dwelling on it. After all, He rose again!

Or two, the church emphasized the crucifixion and its meaning to the point where the resurrection became an afterthought. What Christ did on the cross and how His sacrifice saves Christians from the wrath of God became the primary lens through which to understand faith. The resurrection becomes an almost forgotten, if pleasant, afterthought.

But neither of these is the Gospel. The full Gospel of Jesus Christ is an intertwined story of life, death and resurrection. Easter Sunday is meaningless without Good Friday, but Good Friday is equally as meaningless without Easter Sunday.

Perhaps one of the most befitting images for the Gospel story is that of a Celtic knot. In a Celtic knot, every strand is completely interlaced with every other strand. There is no beginning or ending to a Celtic knot.

Until we see the Gospel as a Celtic-like knot—completely interwoven with no definitive start or finish—we will always have an incomplete picture.

 

Filed Under: Resurrection 1 Comment

Why Cross and Resurrection? (RJS)

March 8, 2012 By RJS 35 Comments

As we move through Lent and approach Easter it has become commonplace to have  questions  surrounding the historicity of the early Christian faith hit the news. This year James Tabor has once again hit the news (complete with forthcoming book and Discovery Channel “documentary”) with the purported discovery of a first century tomb in Jerusalem dated between 20 and 70 CE with Christian symbols and phrases inscribed on ossuaries. The tomb is located near the “Jesus Tomb” he hit the news with about five years ago. The latest claim has been met, primarily, with deep skepticism and a wait and see attitude. Dr. Tabor has not exactly endeared himself to his professional colleagues (sensationalists rarely do). MSNBC had a couple of posts (New Find Revives ‘Jesus Tomb’ Flap and  Doubts About ‘The Jesus Discovery’).

Beyond the rather sensational however, Easter brings up a deep question for many. What ever you think of James Tabor and his new ‘sensational’(ized) find – and I will await the vetting and consensus of his peers before taking him seriously – it is interesting that the symbols he claims to have found point to the central Christian claim and hope of resurrection.  Yet the resurrection seems too bizarre to be true, a strange ending to an otherwise interesting tale. It is something hard for rational modern people to take seriously. And the questions go beyond the rather straightforward “can a scientist believe the resurrection?” (for which there are fairly good answers as NT Wright and John Polkinghorne both point out) to the purpose of the resurrection in the story. A commenter on one of my posts a couple of weeks ago put it like this:

The death of Jesus sounds like such a great story of sacrificial love until the resurrection. What a disappointing turn of events! Who wouldn’t go through crucifixion if afterward they would be resurrected and given all power in the universe. It’s no longer about something mature like love but rather about power, and for the Christian being on the team that has all the power and access to eternal paradise. Such a story reminds me more of something I’d see on Saturday morning cartoons … forces of evil battling against the forces of good … than from a wise creator.

How would you answer this commenter?

Why is ‘Cross and Resurrection’ central to the Christian faith?

What does resurrection – so hard for modern people to accept – bring to the faith?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Gospel, Paul, Resurrection Tagged With: , 35 Comments

Resurrection Spirituality

February 22, 2012 By scotmcknight 9 Comments

At the heart of Christian belief about the future is resurrection — the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of the saints, and the power of God to make all things new. On this general idea we agree — and then the problems begin. What will a resurrection body be like? Tom Wright is not alone (Surprised by Hope, The Resurrection of the Son of God) in saying far too many Christians are Platonists: there’s something immortal in the soul that survives death and goes to be with God, and that if there is a body it’s so unlike the current body that we might as well be airy ghosts zipping around the vast spaces of God’s universe.

And this kind of eschatology leads to body image problems now, not to mention lack of care with creation and lack of concern with any sense of salvation having to do with creation and cosmos and new creation. Heaven is up there and out there while a more biblical view of resurrection is that it is bodily and new creation is the new heavens and the new earth and the new Jerusalem.

Tony Thiselton, in Life after Death, weighs in on resurrection. His chapter meanders a bit, stops for a long drink or two in areas that are already well-worn watering holes, but he draws some conclusions that are eminently valuable for a Christian understanding of resurrection. He makes five major points: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Resurrection 9 Comments

Losing It is Finding It

January 20, 2012 By scotmcknight 2 Comments

“It” here means life in this body and this mind. I’m reading a book by William Ian Miller called Losing It with an attempt to enter back into the early days of America with its lengthy subtitle: In which an aging Professor laments his shrinking brain, which he flatters himself formerly did him noble service: A Plaint, tragi-comical, historical, vengeful, sometimes satirical and thankful in six parts, if his memory does yet serve. Miller’s sardonic wit about “losing it” does not spring from some kind of Christian theology about death and resurrection; he’s not, after all, a Christian. But he faces the mirror of death and plays with it the way a cat plays with a dead mouse, perhaps rehearsing in its mind of the joy of the chase.

Then I turn to  Rodney Reeves’ study of how the gospel — life, death, burial and resurrection of King Jesus — impacts all of life and I say that instead of playing with the inevitable winner, death, and instead of pushing it back by braving the realities of aging with some wit, I see in Paul someone who had gone through what Richard Hays calls “the conversion of the imagination.” And it is this conversion of imagination that is on display on every page of Reeves’ study of our “blessed hope” ( Spirituality according to Paul: Imitating the Apostle of Christ).

Do we see in the mirror the face of Christ’s resurrection? Do you face death or turn from it?

But this conversion of imagination means radical shifts on our part. Kris and I had a brief conversation last weekend about cosmetic surgery, and it all began when we observed someone on TV who had obviously had such surgery. Beside the rather obvious, “Do people who have such surgery know how said surgery strikes many?,” and beside the fair-minded observation that that’s how some people prefer to live, I got to thinking about both what Miller and Reeves had to say, and both said a few strong words about what cosmetic surgery says about one’s posture toward the inevitable. We all live, we all die; dying means in most cases aging; in most cases that means the signs of aging are visible to all of us. The mirror does not lie. You can stiff arm death only so long. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Paul, Resurrection 2 Comments

What Difference Does Easter Make?

April 28, 2011 By scotmcknight 12 Comments

This is an outline of a talk I gave at Willow Creek last night:

What Difference Does Easter Make?

Introduction:
We tend to be Good Friday in our gospel: Jesus died for us.
We tend to be Good Friday Christians too: my sins are forgiven.
What good is Easter? What difference does the resurrection make for life today?

The necessity and centrality of the resurrection, and we are incomplete in gospel and Christian life without the resurrection.

First three Christian sermons: Acts 2:36; 3:15; 4:10
Paul’s clear message: 1 Corinthians 15:17
Somewhere we lost contact with the centrality of resurrection and we have now too much of a Good Friday only gospel.

A Good Friday and Easter gospel that makes for a Good Friday and Easter Christian life.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Resurrection 12 Comments