Keep the faith
IT’S Easter Monday and, perhaps for some, a little too late to reflect on Easter. But I wrote this column last week, finishing it on Good Friday, the day of the beginning of the first Easter 2018 years ago — the day of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
It has always surprised me that Christianity has been increasingly attacked in recent decades by some of our social progressive commentators, usually in the weeks preceding Easter and the other major Christian holy day, December 25, or Christmas Day, which celebrates Christ’s birth.
But there have been few such attacks this year, perhaps because the usual critics were too busy moralising about a stupid decision by three young Australian cricketers involved in a balltampering incident during a South African Test match.
The coverage of that decision and its consequences was amazing.
But there is a moral lesson involved, which every single commentator I read acknowledged: it is wrong to cheat!
But back to Easter, which always has been special for me since my childhood Sunday school days.
Christ, a young man of about 33, suffered a terrible death, crucified on a cross, between two criminals, for expressing his belief in God as his actual father.
This was an era of brutality, when thousands were crucified, where torture was rife and you toed the line or else. What was Christ’s crime? He dared to be different, saying he was God’s son, preaching love for God, love for his fellow man and reiterating the 10 Commandments of the Old Testament.
However, in the Sermon on the Mount, he gave us the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer and emphasised we must love our families and our neighbours, among a host of other ethical and spiritual teachings.
This did not go down well with his Jewish religious leaders of the day, who saw his teaching as blasphemous and incited their followers to force Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, who planned to release Christ, to impose the death penalty.
Jesus was not an emperor, a king, a prince or a great philosopher.
Indeed, he was the stepson of what today we would describe as a tradie — perhaps a carpenter/ handyman?
And yet this young man, nailed to the cross at the age of 33, is acknowledged as the Son of God by 2.5 billion people — a third of the world’s population — making Christianity the world’s largest religion.
Christianity’s detractors enjoy telling us the religion is in decline in Australia and most of the Western World. And it is. While 96 per cent of Australia’s population in 1901 were Christian, in the 2016 census this number had dropped to 52 per cent.
On top of that, only some 15 per cent of professed Christians — increasingly elderly — were regular churchgoers, according to one recent survey, although the number does surge at Easter and Christmas.
But I believe Christ’s teachings remain as relevant today as they were more than 2000 years ago.
Throughout Christian history there have been periods of bad leadership, popes included, religious wars — the Crusades, the Reformation — the Inquisition and other human failings, such as a concentration on temporal rather than religious priorities.
But Christianity survived these crises.
In more recent decades, we have had the shocking sexual abuse revelations and the attempted cover-ups by church leaders more interested in protecting institutions than seeking justice and fair compensation for victims.
Thankfully, while many young people have left the churches, disillusioned and angry, a growing number of priests, ministers and ordinary people are leading change.
Christian schools are expanding, which is a positive, given the shocking recent past.
Christ’s message remains relevant because of its simple truths, but, for the moment, in much of Western society, the traditional home of Christianity, many people have turned their backs on it.
The big question is whether and how we can change those negative perceptions in a seemingly secular world.