Easter Tuesday

CNN ran a program, apparently on Easter Sunday (of course) regarding discussion in some circles about whether Jesus was an historical person or just a myth - fiction created by 1st century people that was a derivative of pagan gods.  The blogsite is:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/07/the-jesus-debate-man-vs-myth/. 
A friend brought this to my attention and sought my comments.

A number of thoughts came to mind: 

First of all, faith is just that - things that often cannot be proven, but which we believe because of what we have found evidence that, to us, says what we believe is true.  If everything we believed could be proven, only idiots wouldn't believe.  But, for whatever reason, God didn't set it up that way.  So, we believe because what we have experienced in life, upon reflection, seems to support those beliefs.  If others do not choose to see things in this way, that is their prerogative.

Second, many of the things in our religion WERE based on the pagan and Jewish customs that people in that day were familiar with. 
Was Jesus born on December 25th?  Probably not.  In fact, most likely he was not.  But Christians later set that as the date to coincide with the pagan rituals for the shortest day of the year, the days starting to get longer, and thus the Light of the World coming to dispel darkness. 
Easter is a movable feast that is based on the full moon - the 1st Sunday after the spring full moon!  Again, it was set there to coincide with pagan rituals, as well as the Passover of the Jewish faith, but it's meaning - new life - still holds true, and is very similar to the rituals of other religions. 

But, because they were not actual dates does not erode what we believe about Jesus and our God.  The foundations of our faith remain true even if the 'externals' are not historically accurate.  Jesus, whenever he was born, and whenever he died and rose from the dead, did actually come into our world to open for us the gates to eternal life.  And when we get right down to it, isn't that all that really matters?

Third, as we increasingly become a pagan society that excludes any form of public worship, and the only mix of church and state is the Christmas season we find in stores from September through December 26th, then we can only expect more and more of this kind of blabber to be spread everywhere. 
All we have to do is look to countries like Russia, where the communists effectively banned practice of religion for so long - for generations (if you wanted a good paying job, you had to be a communist, which meant you could not go to church) - that now, when churches are opened again, no one knows anythng about religion or even sees any reason to go to church. 
That's where we are headed in this country, too.

So, when we see these things like this program/blog, it is good that it causes us to ask 'why' we believe what we do, because then our faith gets stronger, and our beliefs are fortified, and that is a good thing.  Continue to steep yourself in our traditions, take frequent advantage of the sacraments God has given us to support us on this journey, and leave the rest to Him!