Presupposing Nothing

Approaching Pascha (Easter), it strikes me how uninterested human beings have become with resurrection. That the idea that a person could raise or be raised from the dead could become almost a commodity (even among Christians!) makes little sense to me, though I perceive the tendency just as keenly within myself. At what point did we lose our fascination with the idea that death could be not be as definitely final as we know it to be? Is it that we, having disposed with the religions that seek to make some sense of faith, nevertheless continue to presuppose an afterlife, a syrupy residual that we, deep in our hearts, still hope for even while we recoil from any explicit discussion on the matter?

Of course, there are the skeptics out there who proclaim vigilently the absence of every hope. There's a popular atheistic slogan that started with advertisements on buses in England and is spreading across the West among the new breed of "humanists," which reads: "There's probably no god, so stop worrying and enjoy your life." Another slogan I read from Seattle appeared at Christmas time: "Why believe in a god? Be good for goodness' sake."

This paradigm presupposes nothing. All we have is what we've got, here and now. Let's make the best of it. Of course, these slogans can only make sense among those raised within the efete mentality of the West, and would undoubtedly prove asinine to the majority of humans on the planet, who generally live, move and have their being in what the West considers abject poverty by its own standards, and often under great duress. To those who presuppose nothing, we'd best not talk of resurrection, because that would demand of us hope, but in spite of every fiber within us that struggles to hope, the spirit of this age -- proclaimed from the rooftops and the sides of London buses with the static of a bullhorn -- intones that all we have to hope for in this life is greater comfort, instant pleasure, and not to be alone. This last hope, of course, can only be proffered by others whose hopes amount to as much vacancy, or less, and who at their very best can only offer themselves after they themselves have been satisfied.

Without resurrection, this life is a vacuum.   

(For more compelling and well-expressed thoughts on this and similar matters, read this.)