First……a few definitions:
Impossible:
Something that just cannot happen……it violates the rules of science and current norms of behaviour.
In A.D. 30 these things were impossible:
Air travel
Circumnavigation
Magnetism
Space flight
Nuclear energy
Telephones
Democratic government
Death:
Heart and lung function cease>anoxia>cellular death>cell rupture and clotting of blood vessels. The brain is the first thing to go. These changes are irreversible. Reanimation…….resurrection of someone dead for 3 days is physically impossible.
Resurrection:
A person is stone cold dead, perhaps beginning to rot. Then, they re-animate and become fully functionally alive.
This leads to a conundrum.
Jesus was crucified (it’s in contemporaneous historical accounts)
He suffered fatal wounds that were not survivable. For three days, he lay in a tomb without modern medical care.
After three days he was walking around, talking and eating. Hundreds of witnesses saw him……at least 11 apostles were gruesomely martyred because they refused to recant.
These three things cannot exist together…….and yet they happened……..they were documented. How can this be?
Remember the riddle of the father, the son, and the fatal accident? The lesson of the riddle is this: When you follow a bulletproof chain of logic from a set of facts to an impossible conclusion……..it is generally because you made a bad assumption.
Bad assumptions are things that we accept and believe…….that are not true. What are they?:
Science is complete, it fully explains everything. If science cannot explain it……it isn’t real. It isn’t possible.
If you cannot see, touch, and analyse something……it is not real.
Secular humanism is the belief system…….some would say religion…..that flows from these assumptions. It says that we are the apex life form……we are in charge. So, we make up the definitions that prove us to be right. If a man wants to hang out in a women’s locker room…….he just has to define himself as a woman. We like this power…….we enjoy this power. This is how our culture operates.
BUT
There is a duality of reality. There is a physical world and there is a spiritual world. Both are equally real. We operate in the physical realm. God is a spiritual being. God operates primarily in the spiritual realm but also in the physical realm. In the physical realm, he routinely does things that are impossible:
Creation in 7 days
The flood and Noah’s ark
Resurrection of the dead
Jonah and the whale
The contents of any Catholic saint’s resume
As a matter of fact……an entity that routinely does physically impossible things..…… is a good working definition of God.
As it turns out, the fact that the resurrection is impossible is critical, because it underscores the duality of reality. It underscores the false assumptions that undergird secular humanism. In fact, the only defense that secular humanism has to offer……..is to deny the resurrection.
The resurrection is the single most important event in human history. It is important precisely because it is impossible. The fact that it is impossible proves that the rules of our physical world are incomplete in some cases…….and flat out wrong in others.
Imagine that a guy in a white robe approaches you on the street and says that he is God and that you need to follow him, obey him, and worship him. You ask “why?” He says “because I talked myself out of a speeding ticket, because I mowed my lawn, because I started a successful business and because I was elected to public office”. It is not likely that you would buy in to his proposition, because all of this stuff is possible. You and I could do all of these things. But……what if he did the impossible?
I follow Jesus……..not in spite of the fact that the resurrection is impossible……..but precisely because the ressurection is impossible.
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19: 25-26, ESV
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble…….it’s what you know for certain…….that just ain’t so.
Will Rogers