Many of us hold beliefs in an afterlife of some sort.  However, we have significant disagreement in how we think that afterlife will work as we hold mutually contradictory descriptions.  For example, if heaven for one man equals having seventy virgins to deflower as he wishes, then that person's heaven equals hell for others. If one person's heaven means being surrounded only by like-minded people, the majority of humanity will be denied entrance.

The Puzzle of the Resurrection

While idling some time away playing computer solitaire and thinking about Easter, it dawned on me how much we humans like to grapple with puzzling things.

Early and often favorite childhood toys are jigsaw puzzles.  Big, heavy, easy-to-manipulate shaped puzzles fill toy boxes of many a toddler. I know few children who don’t like solving them over and over again.  It gives such satisfaction to fit the final piece and say, “It is finished.”

As we age, our puzzles grow in complexity.  We gravitate toward greater challenges, like the 5000 piece puzzle where all the colors look alike and may take days or weeks to finish. What a sense of accomplishment when we conquer!

The Complaint

A group of VERY IMPORTANT church leaders began to grumble about Jesus. “He ignores us, the movers and shakers, the ones divinely given the leadership of The Church. Instead, he takes his meals with people who don’t even give $5 a year to our coffers, haven’t partaken of the sacraments in years AND even support gay marriage and homosexuals as ordained!

The church will decline in numbers even further if they get their way. Why isn’t he dining with us in the hotel conference room so we can form a new strategy on how to build growing, vital, money-generating congregations with metrics that make the heart soar? How dare he?”