As our excitement for Easter’s approach builds, I have a question for you: What should be our focus … a chocolate bunny?
Or, perhaps, the sweetest love story the world has ever known?
Is Easter About a Bunny?
I’m fairly certain the Easter Bunny is not real. I’ve found no historical record of him in the Bible. Not in the Old Testament, and definitely not in the New. Okay, I’m kidding.
But I am serious on this point: Easter isn’t about a bunny delivering chocolate and jelly beans, or dyed egg hunts. It’s not about new dresses and fancy lunches and making a rare appearance in church.
Friends, Easter is about the personal, life-changing relationship God wants to have with each of us. No sugary treat that you and I can receive or give this Easter has a smidgen of the sweetness of His amazing gift.
Searching for Truth
You may not know this about me, but I once totally doubted God and the truthfulness of Christ’s deity.
In fact, I set out to prove that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of distorted and unreliable records of historical and mythical events. I decided that if I could prove that the Bible wasn’t a reliable document of history, then I could also prove that everything it says about God and the Christian faith is in question.
Simply put, God’s existence did not jive with how I saw the world. So I traveled across Europe, seeking out historical manuscripts and knowledgable scholars to not only validate my view, but to do so beyond any shadow of doubt.
But I finally had to admit that the evidence for Christ being exactly who He said He is is overwhelming.
To remain intellectually honest, I couldn’t deny or ignore this truth. It would have been a lazy cop-out for me to just say, “I don’t like this evidence, so I refuse to accept it.”
Our Personal Worldview
I get that we all view life through the lens of our personally constructed worldview.
Some of us acquire our perspective through secular influences such as Darwinism, Postmodernism, or even Enlightenment philosophy. Some of us forge our worldview by the way people treat us. Some of us simply accept as truth whatever we’ve been taught by our parents, friends, or educators.
But a true worldview explains the world as it actually is. Not as we choose to see it.
Some people find it nigh on impossible to believe that God is a personable being who keeps us on His mind 24/7. One young man I met at a conference, for example, was attached to the idea that “God” is simply a massive energy force. So a “personal” relationship, he insisted, is neither possible nor intended.
I’ll agree that God is supernatural energy. But impersonal? No way. Over the past 50+ years I’ve learned that He is active in the smallest details of our lives, even if we don’t realize or acknowledge it.
Man-Made Construct?
“But your God and your Bible are man-made constructs,” argued my young friend. “All world religions are the same in this.”
In truth, Christianity is *nothing* like any other religion. Nor did it piecemeal itself together by borrowing from earlier religions, as some critics like to suggest. This truth is self-evident, if you do the historical research.
The Bible gives us concrete knowledge of God’s loving, yet holy character. The Bible is crystal-clear on one point: the personal cost God was willing to pay to prove His undying love for us.
Jesus was a real person. And He was crucified, died, and buried — then miraculously resurrected. The Romans couldn’t stop God’s plan. The Jewish leaders couldn’t stop God’s plan. Neither can you or I, no matter how committed we are to ignoring or belittling it.
Easter is About Jesus
This young man couldn’t see the value of Jesus’ sacrifice, or the joy believers have because of Jesus’ resurrection.
I asked him to do me a favor: to consider the truth of God with an open mind; to at least question the validity of his worldview.
“Who knows,” he conceded, before we went our separate ways. “I might change my mind one day. In part because you were willing to discuss this so amicably with me.”
Friends, his comment pierced my heart. It reminded me that we MUST share the Good News with kindness and grace. If we don’t share it with sweet humility, we lose our opportunity to have influence with others who have yet to come to know Jesus. This Easter, as you tell others about your relationship with Christ, model the gentle sweetness of our Savior.
