Jesus’s resurrection: If he wasn’t raised, we’re boned.

Of Christianity’s two biggest holidays, Christmas is the easier one for pagans to swallow. ’Cause Jesus the Nazarene was born. That, they won’t debate. There are a few cranks who think Jesus’s life is entirely mythological, start to finish; but for the most part everyone agrees he was born. May not believe he was miraculously born, but certainly they agree he was born.

Easter’s way harder. ’Cause Jesus the Nazarene rose from the dead. And no, he didn’t just wake up in a tomb after a two-day coma following a brutal flogging and crucifixion. Wasn’t a spectral event either, where his ghost went visiting his loved ones to tell them everything’s all right; he’s on a higher plane now; in time they’ll join him. Nor was it a “spiritual” event, where people had visions or mass hallucinations of him, or missed him so hard they psyched themselves into believing they saw him.

Christians state Jesus is alive. In a body. A human body. An extraordinary body; apparently his new body can do things our current bodies can’t. But alive in a way people recognize as fully alive. Not some walking-dead zombie, nor some phantom. Jesus physically interacted with his students, family, and followers, for nearly a month and a half before physically going to heaven.

That, pagans struggle with. ’Cause they don’t believe in resurrection. Resuscitation, sure; CPR can keep a heart going till it can beat on its own, or doctors can revive frozen people. Returning from the dead happens all the time. But permanently? In a new body? Which he took with him to heaven? They’re not buying it. They’re more likely to believe in the Easter Bunny.

But that’s the deal we Christians proclaim on Easter: Christ is risen indeed.

It’s not the central belief of Christianity; God’s kingdom is. But if Jesus didn’t literally come back from the dead on the morning of 5 April 33, it means there’s no such kingdom, and Jesus is never coming back to set it up. And nobody’s coming back from death. There’s no eternal life; at best an eternal afterlife, which ain’t life. There’s no hope for the lost. The Sadducees were right. Christianity’s a sham. There’s no point in any of us being Christians.

No I’m not being hyperbolic. This is precisely what the apostles taught.

1 Corinthians 15.12-19 KWL

12 If it’s preached Christ is risen from the dead,

how can some of you say resurrection of the dead isn’t true?

13 If resurrection of the dead isn’t true, not even Christ is risen.

14 If Christ isn’t risen, our message is worthless. Your faith is worthless.

15 Turns out we’re bearing false witness about God: We testified about God that he raised Christ!

Whom, if it’s true the dead aren’t raised, he didn’t raise.

16 If the dead aren’t raised, Christ isn’t risen either.

17 If Christ isn’t risen, your faith has no foundation.

You’re still in your sins, 18 and those who “sleep in Christ” are gone.

19 If hope in Christ only exists in this life, we’re the most pathetic of all people.

No resurrection, no kingdom, no Christianity. Period.

Doggy heaven.

Years ago, in my junior high school bible class, one of the students asked about doggy heaven. And just for evil fun, I horrified her by quoting Revelation 22.15, which describes New Jerusalem in the new heaven and earth:

Revelation 22.15 NIV

Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

So, I joked, all dogs apparently don’t go to heaven. Looks like they go to hell.

No, that’s not the proper context of the verse. The text does literally have oi kýnes/“the dogs.” But you have to remember what dogs were to ancient Judeans. Some of them did have pet dogs, a practice they picked up from the nations round them. But generally dogs in Israel were scavenger animals: They ate garbage, roadkill, and picked off rats and other vermin. They were ritually unclean, not to mention physically unclean. The Judeans tried to keep ’em outside the gates of old Jerusalem, lest they get inside and wreck things and stink up the place. Stands to reason they wouldn’t want any dogs in New Jerusalem either. Dogs were pests.

Various preachers also like to point out certain Pharisees referred to pagan male temple prostitutes as “dogs.” And yeah, maybe that was the idea John had in mind. But more likely it was the idea New Jerusalem wouldn’t have anything chaotic or destructive in it, like roaming packs of wild dogs.

But we really have no idea about domestic dogs in the new heaven.

See, we lack a whole lot of details about what will or won’t be in New Jerusalem. We have the book of Revelation, but Revelation doesn’t say. And Revelation, I remind you, is an apocalypse: The bulk of John’s visions, if not all of John’s visions, aren’t of literal things:

• Jesus doesn’t literally have a sword sticking out of his mouth. Rv 1.16, 19.15
• Jesus isn’t literally a seven-horned seven-eyed lamb who looks like he’s been killed. Rv 5.6
• Satan isn’t literally a big red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Rv 12.3 Not that Christians haven’t imagined it does look like that.

John was shown what the End was like. Not what the End literally consists of. Jesus didn’t want him—nor us—to have these details. This being the case, we can’t say with full certainty the descriptions of the new heaven/earth in Revelation are what it’ll literally consist of. All we can do is speculate, based on the tiny bits of evidence we have about what some of these visions mean. All we know for certain is Jesus will be there… so whatever it consists of, it’ll be good.

So, housepets in heaven: Don’t know.

I certainly don’t think pets are a bad thing. I gotta wonder about certain pet owners, of course. Some of ’em obsess over their pets to a disturbingly unhealthy degree. I gotta wonder about women who call themselves a “dog mom”: Love your dog all you want, but it’s not your baby, and your experience is not the same as raising human children. But I digress: I don’t see anything wrong with sane pet owners. Nor anything wrong with having pets in heaven.

Here’s the catch: I don’t see anything wrong with marriage either. But Jesus said marriage won’t be valid in heaven. Mt 22.30 (I know; Mormons are in serious denial about that one.) He didn’t go into detail, although many a Christian has speculated it’s because we won’t procreate anymore. I bring this up to point out a relationship we consider totally normal, moral, and (for many) enjoyable—but it’s getting done away with in heaven. So what other radical transformations might we be in for?

Maybe owning pets will be abolished the same as owning humans is getting abolished. All pets go free, and whether they stay with humans is finally voluntary on their part. To me, that sounds way more just and fair than our current situation. But I’m speculating. I don’t know how it’ll work in heaven. Jesus does, but he didn’t tell us.

Paradise: The nicer part of the afterlife.

PARADISE 'pɛr.ə.daɪs noun. In the afterlife, the place of the blessed. [Usually equated with heaven.]

2. The garden of Eden.

3. An ideal, happy, peaceful, or picturesque place or state.

[Paradisal pɛr.ə'daɪz.əl adjective.]

Perdís was an ancient Persian word for “a park.” Persian parks were particularly known for their decorative, ornamental gardens.

Both Hebrew and Greek borrowed the word. Late Biblical Hebrew turned it into pardés, which is found in the bible thrice. Sg 4.13, Ec 2.5, Ne 2.8 Ancient Greek turned it into parádeisos, also found thrice. Lk 23.43, 2Co 12.4, Rv 2.7 It’s where we get our English word paradise.

Of course in English a paradise refers to any nice place. I tend to hear it describe tropical beaches, which are hardly garden-like. But the Pharisees grew to use it primarily to describe Eden, the place of the first humans. And the afterlife.

Like Ecclesiastes commented, nobody really knew what happened to a human’s spirit after death. Ec 3.21 But they speculated. To them, once the body was in sh’ól/“the grave,” once the neféš/“soul, lifeforce” was extinguished, the spirit would go elsewhere and await resurrection. In the Old Testament, “elsewhere” was the same for both the righteous and the wicked. Ec 9.10 They didn’t imagine it as a place of reward nor punishment. It was simply where the dead went.

No, that’s not a pleasant idea. That’s why over time the Pharisees came to believe God sorted people in the “elsewhere” for reward and punishment, before resurrection. Different parts of the afterlife. A restful part, and a hellish part.

Y’know that story Jesus told of Lazarus and the rich man? Lk 16.19-31 Like that. The rich man’s torment, the Pharisees designated ge-Henna, after the burning landfill outside Jerusalem. Lazarus’s comfort, in contrast, was designated paradise, as if the LORD had teleported Eden into the afterlife, and let the ghosts of the deceased wander around there. (Not sure what they’d do with the fruit trees, though.) Yeah, both these terms are metaphors. Torment wasn’t literally a burning garbage fire, although it was mighty bad. Comfort wasn’t literally Eden.

Now, here’s the problem: Is this what our afterlife is gonna consist of? ’Cause for most Christians, this simply won’t be good enough. Our preachers promised us mansions in heaven. We want that. We don’t wanna lounge around with Abraham and await Jesus’s return; we wanna see our dead relatives and friends, then find Jesus and give him a big ol’ hug (and maybe weep on his toga for a bit), then run into the fields and play with our childhood pets which died years ago. We don’t just want comfort; we want our eternal reward. Right away.

So we wanna hear Jesus has significantly changed things since bible times. Here’s the problem: Bible doesn’t say he’s changed a thing. But Christian mythology sure does, and that’s the story Christians prefer.