Your Resurrection
I’m older than you, probably (as Carlsberg would say). So I’ve had more time to think about my resurrection than you have. Yes, that’s right – not just Jesus’ resurrection, but my own.
This whole business of the afterlife has been a big issue since the ancient Egyptians developed their method of sliding their mummified kings and queens into pyramids under six million tonnes of granite. Fast-forward a couple of thousand years in the Middle East and you find an elite who had bought into a new position i.e. that there was no afterlife at all. You come to the end and Hey Presto! you disappear. They were called the “Sadducees” and they had taken control of running the culture and religion in the Roman province of Judea in Palestine. Their calling card was “you just die like a dog” - except they had more eloquent ways of saying it.
You have to wonder why they went into that particular line of work at all. Maybe the job looked like a cushy number when they saw the applications ad at the back of the “Religion Times” magazine.
That’s just the time when Jesus appeared on the scene talking about “eternal life” including the afterlife. You get the impression that the Sadducees thought the afterlife was hilarious the way they discussed it with him. Maybe they were the first people to come up with the saying, “Well, nobody ever came back to tell us, did they?” And they were needled by Jesus saying that he himself would die and be resurrected.
The day came. Jesus died – and not the way you would choose. Three more days came and in the morning his friends swore blind that he had indeed been resurrected. He wasn’t in the graveyard where they had buried him right under the noses of armed Roman guards who had been stationed there for the purpose.
On the big morning the guards couldn’t find him either and it scared the living daylights out of them. This was going to make everybody look bad – especially the religion controllers. The guards decided to fess up and told the head boys of the Temple what had happened. So, the leadership came up with a novel conspiracy theory, money changed hands (in an early version of a brown envelope), and arrangements were made that no more would be said about it.
Their problem was that Jesus’ friends and associates could recall the time he spent with them, across the length and breadth of the country, over the next six weeks. Years later they could even tell you what they had for breakfast when they met him in the north of the country. Then, when he was good and ready, and not before, he left them and went to heaven.
Now the friends had two vital pieces of information (a) somebody had “come back to tell us” and (b) they knew where they themselves would end up because Jesus had told him he would come and pick them up later.
The resurrection of Jesus was obvious to them. When they went into town to announce it publicly there was no argument from the public. It was an open and shut case. Thousands of people believed them right away. For now, they could be forgiven and for later they would savour the direct company of Jesus when he comes back for his own people.
But trouble was brewing in certain quarters. You can imagine that those top dogs in religion had their noses seriously put out of joint by the very idea that there was more to this life than a three-bed semi in suburbia. They were up in arms, now not only about the resurrection of Jesus, but anybody’s resurrection. And that was the very first charge on which a Christian was arrested.
It’s been a roller-coaster of a ride since. In our own time, self-appointed geniuses have come up with:
“suspended animation” when your earthy life is over
“mind-uploading” so that future generations can benefit from your clever thoughts
“transhumanism” in case you’d like to evolve while you’re at it and
“cryonics” where you get somebody to promise to freeze your body to around -200 °C so somebody else can heat you up again after a few years, if they’re still alive.
For myself, I have decided to go with Jesus. Of course, it would be odd to choose that if you didn’t care for his companionship in the meantime – but I do. And for the same reasons as those first Christians: (1) I needed to be forgiven and (2) I want to stay with him when this is all over.
When I say that Jesus will come “back for his own people” I don’t mean his own ethnically but his own simply because he purchased them. That’s what he died for. The deal was (and still is): you turn yourself over to following him and he obliterates your sin for good so that guilt won’t dog your footsteps throughout this life and into the next.
So, which will you decide? Stick with cryonics? – good luck with that. You’ll be on your own, mate.
