Why Bunnies Lay Eggs on Easter: A Personal Theory

Infinity scares me.  Like a lot.  The concept that there is a forever amount of time, not only breaks my imagination but it terrifies me.

I don’t understand it.  Can’t wrap my head around it and I think that a lot of people out there are like me.  And that’s why Bunny’s lay eggs on Easter.

Let me explain.  Easter, at least for us crazy Christians, is the celebration of Jesus death and resurrection, but the death part doesn’t scare us as much as we think it does.  Death is natural.  Part of life… well the end of it anyway.

Death is something we expect to happen, like old age and taxes.  We aren’t happy about it but we’ve accepted it.

Resurrection though.  That freaks us out.  Mummies coming back to life, is the stuff of bad horror flicks, but if we are honest, we expect dead stuff to stay dead.  It shouldn’t and normally doesn’t come back to life.

So when he did…

People lost their minds and they started hiding the eggs and blaming it on the bunnies.

Flicker Image: Author “Somewhere in the World Today”

The idea that death wasn’t the end for Jesus, means that he rose again, which he predicted.  He also claimed to be God, and if he was… is (the existing outside the confines of time thing throws me off too) then not only does God exist but the super natural exists.  The transcendent exist.  Eternity exists.

If Jesus just died, like everybody else.  Christianity would be no big deal.  If the natural was all that existed, then we’ve got like 80 or 90 years and it’s over.  I can wrap my head around that.  Not a big deal.

But if Jesus rose, meaning that he is who he said he was, and we need to follow him in order to live for eternity.

That’s heavy.

Like really heavy.

I think I’d prefer to imagine bunnies laying already hardboiled, pastel chicken eggs.

What Poems and People have in common

I mentioned in a post titled “I wish I could hate you” that I like poetry but dislike poems.  When I first wrote that, it served as a moment of self-discovery.  Part of me has always known this truth about myself, but writing it was like discovering it for the first time.  It made it real.

Admitting to not liking poems is kind of like admitting that you don’t like dogs.  Side note: I don’t like dogs, not even when they are puppies.  I know what you’re thinking but I’m not a cat person either and dislike cats even more than I dislike dogs.  I don’t like chocolate ice cream either.  Now that you are all enraged and confused, let’s talk about poetry.

Why do I like poetry?  Well I think it’s because I like things that fit.  Things that tie up or reconnect well.  Things that flow smoothly and then abruptly stop… only to pick back up again.

I like the poetry of life and the poetry of art.  I like the poetry of a great movie or a song that’s particularly touching, but it’s only on rare occasions that I actually appreciate the poetry of poems.

Why do I not like poems?  The majority of poems that I have read seem superficial and vapid.  I struggle to connect with them because many of them are void of context.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying.  There are some poems that I really love but I have to search hard to find a poem that makes an impact on my emotional psyche.

It is difficult, at least for me, to derive meaning outside of relationship and outside of story.  Reading poems outside of their authors context, places the burden of meaning on me and I don’t want that responsibility.  Many readers enjoy this burden because the poem inspires them to be creative and then they can manipulate the poem to mean whatever they need it to mean, but I hate it.

I want to know what the author meant.  I want to know who he or she is and how they felt writing their poem. I’ve found that when I do know the author, or at least something about the author, my enjoyment of their poetry is dramaticly increased.

As I think about my relationship to poems, I can’t help but draw a connection to my relationship with strangers. 

When I read a poem but don’t know the author, the poem becomes a fairly meaningless collection of consonants and vowels that struggle to make up words.

Similarly when I meet a stranger, but don’t know their story, they become just a body.  A collection of arms and legs that have the appearance of life but, at least to me, have not become a person yet.  A body, void of personality and story, is just a body.  It’s just flesh.  Easily objectified, judged, or ignored.  But add a back story, a personality, a sense of humor, and what was just a body or collection of words becomes a PERSON, becomes poetry.

It is a struggle to make the shift from seeing people as a just bodies.  It requires that we transcend the physical and look to the emotional and spiritual, and that has always been difficult for me. I’m clearly not the only one either.  Superficial objectification and judgment are not just my problems.  They are our society’s problems. 

It’s much easier to judge a book by its cover than it is to read the book and then review and interact with its content.  It’s easier to make assumptions based on a person’s clothing than it is to take the time to get to know their character.  It is much simpler to see stature than story, boobs than brains but I’m not satisfied seeing people this way and so I am working to push past the physical in order to connect on emotional and even spiritual levels.

I’m not perfect so I welcome ideas from any of you that have struggled with this.  I will say that the thing that has helped me the most recently is to notice a person’s eyes.

It’s been said that, “The eyes are the window to the soul” and so it is only natural that the eyes become the road that we travel on the journey from body to soul. 

Eyes are emotional body parts.  They are first physical and therefore part of noticing the way someone looks but they also express and show the emotional side of a person.  Looking into a person’s eyes helps me transition from noticing their body to noticing their soul.

When I remember to notice a stranger’s eyes, it becomes much easier for me to connect with them and have conversations deeper than small talk about the weather.

What things help you connect to people and see them as more than just a collection of body parts?

Bacon and Eggs and Sex

Last month I wrote a series of blog posts titled “Let’s talk about Sex”.  They were inspired by a desire that I’ve had for quite some time to write a book that explores the questions and issues that revolve around Christian dating and sexuality.  Well I’ve begun the long painful process of writing a book and I’d like to share my initial ideas with you all to see what you think.  This is obviously not ready to be published but I think its pretty good.  I’d love to hear some feedback.

To keep reading, click on the picture below:

Sanctioning Martyrdom

We are all in process.  Two steps forward one step back.  We have good days and bad days, awful weeks and great months.  Life is a journey that often takes crazy turns, and has a ridiculously enormous amount of speed bumps (kinda like my new apartment complex. I mean seriously I feel like I get a minor concussion every time I drive through.  They are like every 30 feet.)

Looking back on my spiritual/theological journey it’s interesting to see the dramatic changes that I’ve made to my world view and theology over the years.  In high school I was the theology expert.  I had it all figured out by the time I graduated.  Then I got to Bible College and realized that I was young, naïve, and had suddenly become an intellectually tiny fish swimming around in a tank full of sharks.  By the time I graduated I had grown up quite a bit.  I had developed positions on important issues and was pretty confident in what I believed and able to defend my positions fairly well.  After being a year out of college I feel like I’m back at square one.  The smarter I get the dumber I feel.

I was always told that the study of God was an endless task because he is infinite and every question that we answer about him causes us to ask 7 or 8 new questions.  But nobody told me that I would also have to go back and re-answer several previous questions whose answers would now be dependent on the new answer and would need to change in order to maintain unity in my worldview and consistency in my theology.  So for every new answer I would receive 8 new questions and have to evaluate 6 old questions.  Then for each of the 6 old questions I would receive 8 new and 6 old which brought the total up to 84 questions plus the original 8….  Confused yet… Me too.
My theological journey has been a constant ebb and flow. There’s tension between the desire to have an open mind and be willing to explore new areas of theological thought and the desire to hold on to what I know.It’s a roller coaster up and down, spinning sideways, with several loop-the-loops right in the middle and at times, it leaves me just as nauseous as the real thing.  The constant tension and sudden drops in confidence is frustrating to say the least but I found some comfort this week as I was reading through the book of Acts. (Speaking of roller coasters, the picture to the right is me on splash mountain and I’m not faking it.  I’m uncomfortable with heights… Don’t judge me!)

At the end of Acts 7 Stephen is stoned and a man named Saul is standing nearby holding peoples coats.  Acts 8:1 says that this man, Saul, approved and supported this public execution.  Now think to yourself about what type of person would you might expect to come out and support a public execution by a mob of angry Jews.  Certainly you are not thinking that the local pastor or religious leader would be there in support?  The interesting thing to me was that Saul was a religious man.  And he wasn’t just a religious man, he was a religious leader.  The thing that blows me away is that he seriously believed that he was doing the right thing.  Standing up for what was right, serving God.  Acts 23:6 tells us that Paul was a PK (Pharisee’s Kid) and Acts 22:3 tells us that Paul was educated by Gamaliel who was a well known Pharisee.  It also tells us that Paul was very zealous for God and yet, in acts 7 we find Paul publicly condoning the first recorded martyrdom of Christianity.

This part of the story scares me to death because I have that sinking feeling in the back of my mind that I too might be holding onto a certain doctrine or theological issue that I’m completely wrong on.  And if I am wrong it’s not just me that’s wrong.  I’m a pastor who’s helping other people on their spiritual journey.  I’m giving guidance to young, moldable minds.  What if I’m wrong about something, like Paul was?  Hopefully I never get to the point where I start condoning the public mob mentality that leads to martyrdom of God’s people but  Paul did…

So I’m sure you’re starting to think to yourself… “Self, I thought he said he found some encouragement in the book of Acts”.  Well I did, and it is in the story that I’m sure most of you have heard in Acts 9.

Act 9:1  Meanwhile Saul, still breathing out threats to murder the Lord’s disciples, went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, either men or women, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

As he was going along, approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

So he said, “Who are you, Lord?” He replied, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting!  But stand up and enter the city and you will be told what you must do.”  (Now the men who were traveling with him stood there speechless, because they heard the voice but saw no one.)

So Saul got up from the ground, but although his eyes were open, he could see nothing. Leading him by the hand, his companions brought him into Damascus.  For three days he could not see, and he neither ate nor drank anything.

Long story short, this guy named Ananias receives a vision from God to go see Saul, He does, scales fall out of Saul’s eyes and he can see again.  Then he immediately gets baptized and starts preaching about Jesus but Saul wasn’t exactly accepted by people at first and he wasn’t perfect right off the bat.  He ends up pissing a bunch of people off and has to get kidnapped and taken out of the city by other disciples.

The thing about this story that is so encouraging to me is that Saul is also Paul.  You know the guy that wrote most of the books in the New Testament.  The apostle to the Gentiles.  Early on in his life he got blinded by poor theology and made mistakes and yet… God still used him.  And Saul AKA Paul, ended up becoming one of the most influential missionaries and  Christians of all time.

God used a guy who was wrong.  And it wasn’t just that he explained the trinity incorrectly or had a misguided view on some obscure theology like millennial view.  He was sanctioning the murder of God’s people.  In a sick and twisted way this story gives me hope that God can use me as a teacher and that he will work in the lives of those students that I mess up in my own special way.