Of Billboards, Prophecy and Resurrection

If you have traveled national highways much over the last decade you may have noticed a battle of the billboards: Believers vs. atheists. Believers post things like: “ The Fool Has Said in His Heart there is no God.” “Life is Short. Eternity Isn’t.”–God “To All Our Atheist Friends: Thank God You’re Wrong!”

Atheists post things like: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” “In the Beginning Man Created God.” And, “Want a Better World? Prayer Not Required.”

These signs are obviously very public postings with specific intent. But there is room to wonder what these signs tell us about the age we live in. There is no doubt that western society has adopted a militant spirit against believers. But not all believers. God forgive us but we are not bothered by believers in abortion, believers in freedom to pursue every type of perversity, believers in almost any kind of religion, even violent ones. We are not bothered by believers in systems or ideologies that consistently degrade or offend against human dignity. But we are “bothered” by believers in Jesus Christ! We are bothered by His effect on people, His power to persuade people, to influence them, to change their lives.

It points, in a timeless way, to the story of the Passion narrative which we have just celebrated these last days. Caiaphas, the high priest involved in the orchestration of Jesus’ execution unwittingly prophesies the real significance of Jesus’ death.

As the Sanhedrin met, the argument went like this: “What are we going to do? If we leave him (Jesus) alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation.” 

“…Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish. He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation... So from that day on, they planned to kill him.” John 11: 47-53

The argument is that bad things happen when too many people believe in Jesus. Our civilization is held back and the glory of man in all his capacity for achievement is retarded. Ignorance and religion are equated and held to be responsible for man’s lack of development.

The origin of this perspective, of course, is man’s own ego. When man becomes the measure of all things, as he is in the secular order, God, whether you believe in Him or not, has to be marginalized. In fact, He is more marginalized in our culture than any of the minorities we like to point to.

What’s more, it can easily be argued that we live in a world that is still trying to kill God, and which justifies this by assigning the prevalence of tragedy to believers. From the beginning of time, this dynamic has been so pervasive we should really recognize it more quickly than we do. Religion, but especially the Judeo-Christian tradition, must be done away with because it is the cause of wars, evil, ignorance and injustice. The cause is not the corruption in the heart of man, but belief in God! And not the Greek kind of God who sits on top of Mt. Olympus randomly throwing bolts of lightning at his unsuspecting subjects. But a God Who is Father to us, Who is full of mercy, goodness, kindness, Who has made everything for our delight and betterment, and Who loves us with such a crazy love that He has even been willing to die for us. This is the God that we work with might and main to deny and exclude.

What’s even crazier is that we tried to definitively destroy Him once. But then He rose, conquering death, all evil in the process, and claiming for us an inheritance that utterly transcends anything that can ever be taken away from us. And what is the reaction? The same as the reaction of the Pharisees to Lazarus. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and because so many people came to believe as a result, the furious response of the Pharisees was: “Let’s kill him again!”

Somehow we become bent on destroying the eternal, because the eternal intrudes upon our immediate plans. Why we are so interested in preserving our “mess of pottage” over the infinite treasures promised us is one of the strange ironies of our fallen nature. And yet in our attempts to deny and destroy the existence of God’s real presence among us, we testify to it at the same time.

As we celebrate with special fervor, amidst the disbelieving “signs” of our times, and solicitous for the salvation of all our brothers and sisters, our hearts catch the new fire of the Easter light that pierces the darkness of doubt hanging over the world in which we live. Jesus has triumphed in Resurrection, in glory and majesty; and within the embrace of Our Blessed Mother, whose singular faith during the Paschal Mystery emboldens us, we hold His light for the world to see until He comes again in glory! Alleluia! He lives no more to die, but lives that all may have eternal life!