Did you know Easter was a Christian festival?

Tomorrow our girls celebrate Easter at school with a 'hat parade'. The ubiquitous images of Easter in the shops are bunnies (?) and Eggs (which point to re-birth more than resurrection).

Now the usual response to all this from Christians is an Easter version of 'bah humbug'. So, how can we redeem Easter as a festival without becoming merely anti-culture?

One thought is to try to redeem some of the imagery...

For example, if we use hollow chocolate eggs as symbols of an empty tomb then we are combating secularism with the gospel and following in centuries of Christian tradition.

Anyone got any better ideas?

Eat Chocolate for Jesus?

The story behind the story

After recently circumnavigating Gulliver's Travels, Anne of Green Gables, The Hobbit, and Treasure Island, I'm now reading Little Women with my own little women.

Having never read it before (it doesn't have a single 'kapow' in the whole book) I was surprised by the content of the first chapter. The girls' favourite game (in the book) is playing 'Pilgrim's Progress'. Likewise they are each given a copy (of Pilgrim's Progress) for Christmas and promise their mother (their father is off fighting in the war) that they will try to emulate Christian's journey.

So Pilgrim's Progress is the story behind the story. I wonder how many Little Women readers know what that story is all about?

It made me think two thoughts:

1. The Christian gospel has greatly shaped (Western) English literature. Another argument for Christian SRE in schools - learn the gospel and pass English HSC!

2. The OT is essential to understanding the NT. It is the story behind the story.

Happiness

A popular evangelistic fad at the moment is to piggy-back on the current research into happiness. Since everyone is obsessed with being happy the general idea is that we show them how faith in Christ actually promotes happiness.


1. I like the idea of a soft apologetic, starting with a desire for personal happiness in popular culture and gently trying to turn that towards God. It is absolutely essential that Christians engage with contemporary social attitudes and research.


2. However, I've got questions about the fundamental premise of this approach. Usually it begins with a definition of happiness, with attempts to 'correct' society's defintion. Nevertheless the basic assumption is that the goal of humanity is to be happy and that Christianity is an aid to that goal.

I'm not sure about that. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said that the blessed are those who mourn. Paul talks about godly sorrow that leads to repentance in 2 Cor. 7. In other words sometimes being sad is a good thing, indeed sometimes what God wants for us.

Therefore I assume that you'd need to end up by challenging the overall assumption that God wants us to be happy all the time. (NB I'm NOT saying that God wants us to be sad all the time!) Hence instead of pointing everyone to Christ this strategy might, however unintentionally, encourage some to pursue happiness as their goal in life. Instead the gospel teaches us that true contentment and satisfaction in life is found when we pursue Christ as our goal in life.