The Limits of Description

literal or symbolic resurrection :)

➣Last week’s conversation with Randy Woodley was fantastic.

➣Coming up this week is a conversation with the one and only Roberto Che Espinoza, PhD

➣Today’s Idea: The Limits of Description

---

Limits of Description

PART I
Easter season is always a great time to get caught up in conversations about literal or metaphorical resurrection. 😄 I posted something last week suggesting there’s room to go in either direction, and ... there was pushback. Which is fine, honestly. It’s just an opportunity to think through some things together. This post is an extension of that.

At one point someone suggested that a metaphorical reading of the resurrection means a person doesn’t really trust Jesus; they said that accepting the literal resurrection is the only way to demonstrate faith. But couldn’t the opposite be argued? Think about it: the more literal evidence one requires, wouldn’t there be less need for one to have faith?

And speaking of literal — a “literal” reading assumes something you can check the words against, some kind of stable background. When you read “a rainbow appeared after forty days of rain,” you know what rain is, what rainbows are, what days are, what forty means. The literal reading works because experience anchors it.

But bodily resurrection has no such anchor. No prior experience. No comparable event. No category in human history to run it against. Which means when someone says they’re reading it “literally,” they may be doing something stranger than they realize; that is, they may be taking language at face value for something that, by definition, exceeds the face value of any language. 🤔

I’m not saying it didn’t happen. Neither am I saying it’s certain that it did happen.

The resurrection accounts themselves are, well, strange. Jesus’s post-resurrection body was able to be touched, but also to pass through walls. Jesus was recognized and unrecognizable in the same conversation. What was going on? I don’t think the writers were trying to be evasive. I think they were straining against the limits of language to describe something they had no experiential anchor for. Again, there was nothing to compare it to.

To pretend there was consensus, in fact, actually devalues what the text itself says. Consider that those present at the ascension still had doubts. Of all the people who didn’t have doubts, you would’ve thought those would’ve been the people. But, nope. So many people today want to fight for the literal, the verifiable, the concrete — and yet even for those who were there, doubt was still very much part of the equation.

👉🏼 To say the resurrection may be metaphorical is not to say it’s less than real. On the contrary, it may be the most real thing, but just not reducible to any known category.

The future of our world may depend on our ability to hold space for the person who needs a locatable, datable, empty tomb and the person who experiences resurrection as a truth too large for any single account to hold. Can’t we do that? Aren’t both welcome to believe in the hope of something beyond death?

And strangely, isn’t the atheist welcome too?

It took me a few years to really hear what my atheist friends were saying. When they told me they found comfort in believing there was nothing beyond this life, they weren’t being provocative. They were being honest. I kind of get it now. Life is fatiguing. Overwhelming. For some, the thought that it would simply end is genuinely welcoming. And I’ll say this, there’s something to be said for a good nap. Maybe death is something like that. Falling asleep. Letting everything go.

And one beautiful thing about that framework is that it makes the present matter. There’s no deferring life to some hereafter. What’s here is worth paying attention to.

Does atheism have limitations? Sure. But so does every other framework on offer.

PART II
Meanwhile, in a country where we love to argue literal or symbolic resurrection, there seems to be a great deal of literal death-dealing going on. 😳 The U.S. has been at war for 229 of its 249 years — roughly 92% of its existence!

When the current administration, overwhelmingly endorsed by christians, announces it needs another $1.5 trillion to fund a war with Iran (an announcement that arrived on Good Friday, no less), it should give us pause.

War is wrong. It always has been, but perhaps never more so than now. It used to kill more soldiers than civilians. That changed over the last century. Now it’s overwhelmingly civilians. For every one soldier who dies, imagine eight women, children, and elderly people dying alongside them.

The “enemy” being targeted is increasingly just people trying to live their lives. That’s unconscionable, regardless of political persuasion. 💔

And the money. I’m doing my taxes this week—yes, I’ve procrastinated—and I’m already angry about sending money to Washington, to pay for war.

And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many rarely seem to care about the way war victimizes our own soldiers. It’s a testimony to our sacrificial system, actually, the way we send young people off to fight and experience truama. (”Better that one man suffer than the whole nation.” Isn’t that what the religious leaders in Jesus’s day said?) According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, 👉🏼 at least four times as many active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died by suicide than in combat. (costsofwar.watson.brown.edu)

So what does Part II have to do with Part I? This: What does it matter whether someone believes the resurrection is literal or metaphorical, if they refuse to extend its lesson to their neighbor? The lesson being that Jesus shows back up—not with vengeance against his enemies, but with love. ♥️

This is an indictment against all of us. Sadly, a christian nation we are not. Honestly? I’d rather be an atheist nation and actually pursue peace than be a christian nation (literal or symbolic) and pursue war. Would atheism lead us to peace? Ha, probably not, but clearly religion-ism doesn’t, so why. do. we. pretend. otherwise?

Meanwhile, you know what would lead to peace? Emulating the way of JC.

So, if you’ve been bullied in the past; told that you have to believe “x, y, and z” in order to be a christian, well, I’m here to suggest otherwise. Just do this ... just take it a concept at a time, be patient with yourself and with others, believe what you can and don’t worry about what you can’t ... and through it all, do your best to not return violence for violence (anger for anger, insecurity for insecurity, etc.) ... rather, be like JC, who didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped; who took on the form of a lowly servant and loved everyone.

Amen and amen (and share this with a literal friend.)

PS - Hey, if you’re in the OKC area this weekend and you’re interested in faith communties, or new ways of leading, or credentialing pastors, theologians, spiritual directors and endorsing chaplains within a new and expansive theological mindset, then you might as well join us for the curian network’s get together. People like Shaleen Kendrick, ThD and Thomas Jay Oord and (Re)thinking Faith, Danny Bryant, Tori E. Owens, Joe Cash, Guy, Tracy Tucker, Amanda Oster, Rebecca Lynn (the REBL), Jill Elizabeth, Jon Mays, and others (that have substack profiles that I’m probably forgetting to insert into this post right now, so I apologize!) will be there!