Midknight Review ends the week of political pontification with the beginning of its Easter silence.

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If you do not know that THIS is the reason for the season, you have completely missed the point.

The coming of God to earth, his union with the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and the resulting implications of "Son of God" intertwined with "Son of Man" coupled with God's willingness to do the very impossible, experience death by those whom he created, by those who are infinitely less powerful than he, give us the single most important historical moment man could possibly imagine.

Christian speech says it this wise: it is in the body of his flesh, at the cross, that God reconciled all things unto himself (see Christian scripture at Colossians 1: 22 -23).

In the language of the common man, the point of Christ's death is this - man cannot find peace outside a partnership with this divine death event -- whether man seeks a personal peace or an end to the political wars that have plagued our world since the beginning of [our] time.

Death is always a dying of the individual (whether a person or a political point of view). It is always true that when we die, we "die unto ourselves." But just as our lives mean nothing if we leave no legacy, so too is the story of the Easter Event. And the legacy is this: death has been swallowed up in victory.

For Christians, the story of Easter is about the beginnings of a living, even organic, relationship with a God who should be unaccessible. We believe in God because he has revealed himself in the person of the man, Jesus of Nazareth and we worship this man because he is God manifest in the flesh.

You doubt this? Fine. See you at the end of time.

With the closing out of Earth's season in the universe, we shall see if man-centered theories and self-centered ambitions won the day.

Millions of Christians experience health and victory on a continuing basis. While others pray to the East three times a day or place themselves at the theological center of "what's happening now," Christians choose to live outside themselves by a power that is alive and indwelling.

And while we cannot "prove" any of this, much less offer proof of Christ's Resurrection form the dead, we certainly have as much "proof" for the Easter Victory as Americans have for the existence and consequence of George Washington. His life is no less a faith based issue than is the life and victory of Jesus of Nazareth.

Indeed, there was a time when men circled around Washington's leadership, but that time was more than 200 years ago. To believe in the Washington of history, faith is the central demand, is it not?

Likewise, Jesus Christ. Understand that all of the original twelve apostles, except Judas, died terrible and anonymous deaths and did so without a single moment of denial. And what of a religion's beginnings when both its founder and all those assigned to its proclamation are killed? Midknight Review asserts that the advancement of Christianity, in all its forms and with all of its failings, could not have possibly survived to this day without the Presence of a Forgiving God at its center. Do not forget - the cross was and is all about "forgiveness."

Christians often speak of "God's perfect plan for saving man." And what is that plan? In a word, it is forgiveness.

It is only in forgiveness that marriages continue, that parents remain attached to their children, that wars are truly ended, that nation's serve their people, that churches' learn ecumenical life, and people stop cutting off other peoples' heads.

See you on Monday. We end this post with these words:

As for me and my house , we will serve the Lord.

Grace to all, saint, sinner, Buddist, Muslim, Jew, native Indian.

J David Smithson
Editor,
Midknight Review
and parent of 7 Christian children - each expressing their faith in different ways -- and that is "ok" with this old man.
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