The Historical Messiah

The following blurb was written a Saturday evening some time ago, when my Sunday School class was going through a lesson plan based on a book by a famous preacher.
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I’m supposed to be answering questions in the workbook for Sunday School, and I couldn’t help but think of the way this bunch of believers (and religious believers in general) think about religion. A couple weeks ago we were going through Biblical evidence for Christ’s resurrection (if the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of a perfect God, then all the evidence that we need is in the Bible itself – that is, all evidence within the Bible is sufficient proof) and towards the end the teacher’s wife added “And none of the other religions can claim this. Mohammed died. They admit it. Buddha died. All the founders of all the other religions died…” She apparently said this to illustrate that since the other religions don’t venerate a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead, they don’t offer a way to conquer death, and so are inferior to Christianity, which does tell of a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead and therefore does offer a way to conquer death. I found this remark to be very telling, since it showed how people judge others’ viewpoints – through the standards woven into their own views. Of course, EVERYBODY – not just religious believers – does this. I judge other belief systems according to standards woven into the Esaian religion (the pro-life, animal rights, anti-God, anti-state religion of Isaiah Sage). But the above example demands my attention.

The standard that my Sunday School teacher’s wife uses to judge religions was one which is woven into and quite unique to Christianity – the historical Messiah. This is not the Mythical Messiah that you find in mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where the birth, death, and resurrection of a God-made-man happened in a mythical world which is understood to have no historical parallel with our own and which functions as an allegory for some greater spiritual truth. It is not the Annual Messiah that you find in Earth-centered religions and spiritualities where God-died-and-reborn is little more than a sacralized expression of the sanctity of material existence and a celebration of the Earth’s cycles. This is the sincere belief in a man who actually existed, who really was born on earth on a particular date, who died on a particular date, and who literally rose again three days later. This is the sincere belief in a man whose life you are supposed to be able to plot out on both a map and a calendar. This is the type of Messiah you know can conquer death for you because he actually did conquer his own death when he rose from the grave some time in the spring of A.D. 30-something. Few other religions revolve around the life, death and resurrection of a messiah who existed in linear, human history. And so, naturally, very few religions besides Christianity would meet the standards that Christianity lays down.

Despite and because of this uniqueness, I should give props to Christianity. It assures the believer by pointing to what it identifies as an actual, historical instance of death loosing its sting. It is also the only religion that has managed to be taken seriously while doing it.