*TRUTH* Easter – what about it?
Friday, April 10th, 2009 at
8:41 am
In the last few weeks we have been studying Easter. I’ve learned a lot, found what I’d learned to be untrue, learned more, found that to be untrue, etc…
I have learned that many pagans laugh at us Christians. They call us “blissfully ignorant” of the true meaning of Easter. They think we’re funny – in a laugh at, not a laugh with kind of way. They find it humorous that when we celebrate our Christ’s resurrection we add in so many worldly, pagan traditions without any care of their origins. That we often choose to ignore the facts in the name of fun.
I take offense to this, although I was one of those ignorant Christians for quite a while.
I will no longer run around blissfully ignorant of Easter. Although I can’t seem to track down any absolute truths about the holiday it is no secret that it is littered with pagan-ness.
It seems there are a bunch of different stories on the origins of Easter. I don’t know what or who to believe so my prayers go up about this. I don’t know what is pure and what is pagan. But, as a person who claims Christianity as my own I definitely want to know what I am celebrating each year.
No doubt the Easter bunny is a pagan tradition. We haven’t celebrated the egg hatching bunny in many years. Still, I found no harm in hunting eggs on occasion. The kids have always loved to search out treasures.
But, new research is showing me that it may all, in fact, be pagan in origin and my conscious is saying to stay far, far away from anything that even resembles darkness. So, what am I to do?
My dear husband is quick to remove anything that has a ‘smell’ so the egg hunting is gone. No problem – the kids don’t care at all. We have a lot of fun as a family – we’re pretty silly around here, so it isn’t like we are taking away anything grand. As a matter of fact, the two oldest children are appalled at the consideration of replacing a sacred day with pagan customs.
But, are they really all that pagan? Some of research says no. Grrr. How discern the truth when there are so many different truths out there?
My answer came to me quickly.
There are two streams with drinkable water – one pure and one tainted. At one point the tainted stream meets with the pure one and the pure water, though still there, is now tainted with the impure water, even though I can’t see or pick out the impurities. I don’t want the tainted water. I want to only drink the water from the pure stream so I’ll have to go through the purifying process, using my Bible as my filter instead of taking the easy way and drinking right from the tainted stream in front of me.
I think for my family, this means pursuing only the pure things about this weekend and leaving the tainted stuff behind. When I turn to the Bible I get the truth. The breaking of bread, the torture and death, and the resurrection. These will be our focus. We are choosing to only drink from the pure stream even though it is a bit more work to do it and most people think we’re nuts. It’s part of separating ourselves from the world, which is sometimes quite difficult, but much more rewarding in the end.
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I completely understand! I have struggled with it this year and all my research came up confused and conflicting. Then on Friday, our church had a Passover dinner where we learned how Jesus was in all of the elements in the Passover Seder except one item that he didn’t include. It was the hard boiled egg. He said that it was added later to represent the Israelites captivity in Babylon during the time of Nehemiah. And that the Babylonians had a goddess of fertility and the eggs represented that goddess and that time. However, no where in the Bible does it say to add that to the Passover meal and no where in the Bible does it say that the egg represents new life, or fertility. It was added later on. This year we did eggs, because they were already planned and the kids were looking forward to it. I don’t know what we will do next year. Hope you had a very blessed Resurrection Sunday.