Garth George: Thank Christ for your Easter holiday

I see it as ironic that each year's longest holidays - Easter and Christmas - remain firmly attached to the two principal festivals of Christianity.

After all, if you believe much of what you read and hear, Christianity has no place in modern New Zealand - it's conservative, reactionary and old-fashioned, its practitioners a bunch of bigoted, narrow-minded, judgmental, superstitious, hypocritical spoilsports.

So it amuses me that all those people and organisations who never miss a chance to discredit, denigrate and demonise Christianity will happily take Friday and Monday off.

They will tell you that Easter was, in any case, originally a pagan festival and was adapted by the Church to suit its purposes. And they will say it in such a way as to indicate that that somehow demeans the celebration of the crucifixion and resurrection.

But no matter how vehement and dogmatic the anti-Christian message becomes - and let me tell you, we ain't seen nothin' yet - it does not and cannot cast doubt on the timeless validity of the story of the first Easter, which provides the very kernel of Christian belief. For it is a story of faith, hope and love - and those are things too big to be confined to churches and their adherents.

Nevertheless, most New Zealanders are, and will remain, indifferent to the true meaning of Easter, just as on the first Good Friday some 2000 years ago a largely indifferent populace went about their lawful (and no doubt unlawful) occasions while Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, was betrayed by one of his disciples, hauled before the highest religious council of Israel and falsely accused of, and convicted of, blasphemy. He was ridiculed, spat on, punched and kicked.

Later in the day, he was hauled before the highest secular tribunal, again falsely accused, sentenced to be crucified and subjected to more ridicule and violence. A handful of his followers watched as he was mercilessly nailed to a cross and hung up to die; a few more out of morbid curiosity looked on with callous nonchalance; most just got on with life.

But his followers, who are still but a few, will this long weekend take time to reflect on the profound redemptive, sin-shedding mystery of the Cross, which is at the heart of Christian belief and which provides the raison d'etre for the observance of Easter.

As the weekend proceeds, they will remember, too, in joy and wonder, the resurrection of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who took all the sins of the world upon himself so that all mankind could be reconciled to a passionately devoted God, the creator and sustainer of the universe.

Christians throughout the world will, with renewed faith and hope, thrill afresh to those timeless words of Jesus recorded by the apostle John: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."

But they will be conscious also of Jesus' words which followed seconds later: "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil."

Thus this Easter, as at every Easter, the gladness and gratitude of all true believers will be tinged with sadness.

And I will reflect once again on the words of the 19th-century philosopher, Herbert Spencer: "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

garth.george@hotmail.com