EASTER LETTER TO MY ATHEIST FRIEND

 

“What is Easter? Why should you be happy?”

This letter is my answer to the questions you raised in your email after you caught sight of palms taken home by a host of families in your neighborhood. I am not a theologian, but a storyteller. I’ll try to answer your questions with a story (taken from Philip Yancey’s book Disappointment with God) of people just like the families you see every day in your neighborhood.

Meg had two kids, Peggie and Joey – both born with cystic fibrosis who stayed skinny no matter how much food they ate. They coughed constantly and labored to breathe – twice a day Meg had to pound on their chests to clear out mucus. They spent several weeks each year in a local hospital, and both grew up knowing they would probably die before reaching adulthood.

To the bitter end, Joey, a bright, happy boy, died at the age of twelve. Peggie defied the odds by living much longer. She died at the age of twenty-three. Meg shared her grief:

“I was sitting beside her bed a few days before her death when suddenly she began screaming. I will never forget those shrill, piercing, primal screams. Nurses raced into the room from every direction and surrounded her with love…

“Peggie never complained against God. It was no pious restraint: I don’t think it ever occurred to her to complain. And none of us who lived through her death with her complained at the time either. We were upheld. God’s love was so real, one could not doubt it or rail against its ways…

“[P]erhaps I’ve been brought once again to the only thing that helps me experience God’s love: His stroking, His “I’m here, Meg.” But, again I wonder, how could He be in a situation like that and sit on His hands?”

Meg is a devout Christian and a pastor’s wife. Could we fault her if she raised questions about unanswered prayers, unhealed bodies, social injustices, and countless other instances of unfairness?

Speaking of social injustice, here’s a tragic story of Kian, a 17 years old boy in a poor family of four siblings. His mother worked as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia, while his father operated a sari-sari store that Kian minded from 5:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon every day before he went to school. After closing the store at night, he would usually walk around the block for some small talk with neighborhood friends.

Perhaps it was during one of those walks when he was shot by the police operatives – one of the thousands (6,000+ per gov’t to 30,000 per CHR/ICC figure) killed in the drug war.

“Tama na po! May test pa ako bukas!” Kian begged for mercy before he was killed.

What passing that test could have meant to Kian? A handful of kid’s stuff could have meant a promising future for his whole family.

A step closer to his dream of no longer using cooking oil when giving a massage to his father.

A step closer to his dream of uniting his family with his mother giving up her overseas work as a domestic helper.

A step closer to his dream of having a bed for each of his family’s siblings.

A step closer to his dream of expanding his family’s sari-sari store that has supported his whole family.

A step closer to his dream of being a policeman. What an irony.

“Meanwhile, where is God?” C.S. Lewis wrote these words amid the deep grief after his wife’s death from cancer. “When you’re happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him… you will be – or so it feels -- welcomed with open arms.  But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.”

Could we fault Kian’s family if they raised the questions: Is God silent? Is God unfair? Yancey addressed these questions with another question and illumination:

“Isn’t that what God did at Calvary?... The cross that held Jesus’ body, naked and marked with scars, exposed all the violence and injustice of this world. At once, the Cross [screamed] what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness, a God of sacrificial love.

“No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment -- God himself was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side. Just as Good Friday demolished the instinctive belief that this life is supposed to be fair, so too Easter Sunday followed with its startling clue to the riddle of the universe.”

There you are. Easter is a sampler of what is to come.

“Here is the dwelling of God among men: He will pitch his tent among them and they will be his people. God will be with them and wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the world that was has passed away.” (Rev. 21:3-4)

The deaths of Peggie, Joey, and Kian will never be restored in this life. No amount of words of comfort can soothe the pain in the hearts of Meg and Kian’s family. But such pain will melt away on the day of the final judgment. Just as Meg will take her children back, so too Kian’s family will find him again.

Having much the same mortality rate – atheists and saints alike -- we all die.

In any tough question, like “Is God hidden?” or “Why doesn’t He intervene?” (In Kian’s case, haven’t we felt in our bones the International Criminal Court is His intervention?), the ultimate word is Heaven – the final answer to the problem of God’s hiddenness. Jesus’ promise in John 14:2 is soul-stirring:

“In my Father’s house there are many rooms and I go to prepare a place for you: did I not tell you this? “

Not only did Jesus tell us, but he showcased to us his promise through his resurrection. What assurance can be more amazing than such a promise?

That ought to be the awesome answer to your question, my friend, about why we are happy in celebrating Easter Sunday.

Happy Easter, my friend!

Head still photo courtesy of freepikdotcom.