Easter and the Atheist

Have you ever had to publically debate an atheist? Hope 103.2 Open House asked me to debate Dan Barker. He is a former Christian minister, who has joined the ranks of atheist Richard Dawkins. Barker was in Australia for last weekend’s atheism conference in Melbourne. Our debate went for an hour over the existence of God, the person of Jesus and his death and resurrection. It was not for the fainthearted as atheists are tough-minded, and this current crop of new atheists are ‘angry’. They don’t like the gospel, the church and wish us confined to the scraps of history.

I reminded Dan, that as apologist Gary Habermas points out, there are 5 crucial facts found in our New Testament that few repute:

There is a strong case for the death and resurrection of Jesus. The final challenge I left with the listeners was to read the Gospels for themselves and let the Spirit of God work.

After the debate I took time to do just that and also I reflected on John Updike’s remarkable Easter poem. It’s my favorite and may the strength and truth of this risen Christ be our message at Easter. Have a blessed Easter.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if he rose at all it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse,
 the molecules reknit,
the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that – pierced – died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable,
a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,
not stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour,
we are embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

If you would like to hear the full debate (30mb), click here

Principal, Morling College