Good Friday; whether you're a practicing Christian or not, this is a moment to contemplate Christ's suffering on the cross. A historical fact, one that even the atheist sceptical debunkers among historians cannot easily deny. Whatever you believe happened after the Crucifixion, and whether or not you believe that Jesus Christ was God, it remains an undeniable fact that the historical figure of Christ had a transformational effect on Western civilisation.
His teachings resulted in an entirely new ethos – getting on with your fellow human beings, whoever they are, wherever they're from. This contrasted with the previous Graeco-Roman ethos that the strong take what they can, while the weak suffer what they must. And God the Father of whom Christ spoke was a merciful and loving God, not at all like the Old Testament God, ever quick to anger and to smite sinners.
Christ's death on the cross was profoundly symbolic for all those who witnessed it or heard of it from first-hand witnesses. The immediate local impact was sufficiently powerful to spread a new spiritual movement across the Mediterranean basin, kick-starting a new global religion, broad in its appeal and inclusive it its reach. Christianity offered new hope and a new perspective to assuage earthly suffering.
The quality of human life was vastly worse two millennia ago than it is today; disease and injustice making life hard to bear. Short, nasty and brutish. And so a universal message of salvation, of a kingdom 'not of this earth' would have been appealing.
Life today is certainly easier than it was, but it is not without suffering, and that suffering is not evenly distributed among us eight billion humans. Watching your child die from malnutrition brought on by natural disaster or war must be the most intense emotional pain imaginable. How can your consciousness strive for some elevated experience when you are suffering?
Is God indifferent to human suffering? Here I'd pick up on the point I have made before; I do not believe in God is a person, nor on God as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, and certainly not one that intervenes in individuals' lives. If you see God as a purpose, a direction, a journey – a work-in-progress – you can accept an imperfect Universe. One filled with suffering and death, but one that is constantly improving, one with a telos – an end-point, a goal.
Given the undeniable historicity of Christ, why do so many people turn their back on His message? Lack of curiosity, I think. You don't need to buy into the whole doctrine. For me the important thing is to look at what all religions have in common with one other, rather than on what divides them. Humans have an innate urge to seek the Divine light.
Death is only the end if you see consciousness as something locked in the skull, a purely biological epiphenomenon, the emergent result of evolution.
Easter is the triumph of life over death. Whether you see that as literal (Christ's Resurrection), metaphoric or metaphysical – that is entirely up to you.
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