Was Jesus or Adam a Zombie? Jeff Cook says…

Was Jesus or Adam a Zombie? Jeff Cook says… October 31, 2012

Was Jesus a Zombie? by Jeff Cook (info at bottom).

He came back to life after his death. He is chasing all human beings everywhere. Once he gets hold of people, his blood changes them and they in turn seek to change others.

Could it be more clear? Jesus was a Zombie.

I just started watching “The Walking Dead”. The directors routinely show the transformation of a corpse into one rising up, walking among the living, at one point calling such a resurgence: “the resurrection event.”

There are interesting parallels here worth exploring with Jesus—and some healthy distinctions to be made.

First, we should remind ourselves what resurrection is. Resurrection is not a blood disease or the recovery of a corpse. Resurrection is not a natural process, and it is certainly not something that makes one “the living dead.” Jesus’ resurrection was a total physical renewal. On Easter morning, death and corruption were decisively overrun in this single human person, as every cell of Jesus’ body cast off mortality for immortality.

Resurrection, then, is what it looks like when the affects of sin are removed from a human being. Resurrection is what it looks when a person becomes what they were always made to be. Resurrection is a transformation from mere creature into an immortal child of God.

Looking at other stories, the better biblical example of one with zombie-ism was actually Adam. Adam dies, yet he lives. He experienced a debilitating soul-infection, which he began passing on to others.

Adam’s zombie-like condition is actually a great metaphor for how sin infects and behaves. Sin not only spreads, it destroys one’s mind and humanity. Sin is passed on when someone claws us, bites us, maims us, and we transform into something we were never made to be.

The surprising news Jesus announced was that this process of death being spread has come to an end and is now being reversed. Human beings are being baptized into health and rising again within. In this way Jesus was like Patient Zero—the first to change—but what he spreads is the exact opposite of Adam’s zombie-ism; the blood of Jesus is more like anti-serum for those of us already infected—those of us aware that we are actually the walking dead.

Jeff Cook teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the author of Everything New: One Philosopher’s Search for a God Worth Believing In and is the pastor of Atlas Church in Greeley, Colorado. www.everythingnew.org @jeffvcook


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