Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
For many, the White Queen is a poster girl for faith. Her imagination has colonized her intellect. She’s developed—with much practice—an alchemical ability to turn fantasies into facts. This talent is desired by some, derided by most.
Some of my friends are like Alice and they consider me the White Queen. They reckon I’ve managed to suspend or sideline my rational faculties, at least enough to make room for certain impossibilities like the resurrection. As though one day I relented, OK, fine, if this is the intellectual price I have to pay to be a Christian, let me add this item to my inventory of unpopular opinions: a corpse reanimated one Sunday morning. There!
To be clear, this is not how Easter faith works. If you want to know how it does work, let me provide a tour. For any Alices who are willing to go down the rabbit hole, here’s a journey to faith that takes in three Hs. No need to be a White Queen—reasonable people like you can believe in the resurrection. How? By considering the heavens, history, and him.
Heavens
Here are three features of our world that are already Easter-like. They already have a life-from-the-dead shape to them. I don’t offer these as watertight proofs of God. But I do raise them as suggestive pointers.
Everything has come from nothing. It’s not just Christians who believe in improbabilities. We all live inside a glorious absurdity called existence. Here we are. We needn’t be. But out of nothing, everything. Out of the void, life. It’s incredibly Easter-like.
It’s not just Christians who believe in improbabilities. We all live inside a glorious absurdity called existence.
Order has come from chaos. There’s an intricacy to life and to our life-sustaining universe. Physical forces had to be “just so.” (Look up “the fine-tuning of the universe” to get a sense of how improbable a life-permitting universe is). Yet wouldn’t you know it, against all the odds—a cosmos, not a chaos! But more than such remarkable physical order, there’s also the emergence of biology.
Life has come from nonlife. As a Christian, I believe that on Easter Sunday the nonliving Jesus came to life. Out of lifelessness and entropy, an extraordinary vitality burst forth. This is undoubtedly a miracle. But a purely biological account of our origins tells a story much more extraordinary. According to a naturalistic explanation, all life has emerged from nonlife—and without a God of resurrection to work the wonder.
Since this is the nature of our life-from-the-dead universe, a different question emerges: Are things made more absurd or less absurd by believing in the God of resurrection?
But it’s not just the heavens that point the way to Easter faith—there’s history too.
History
Let’s explore the history of the first century and history since the first century.
First-century history. Despite his humble circumstances, Jesus of Nazareth thought of himself as the King of heaven’s kingdom, the central figure of history, and the Judge ruling God’s future. The Jewish authorities found him guilty of blasphemy and the Romans executed him on account of his claims to kingship. He died on a cross and was placed in a tomb, the whereabouts of which were well known. Three days later, that tomb was empty, and his followers had experiences of the risen Jesus which went on for another 40 days and then stopped when Christians say Jesus returned to heaven. The body was never found, and all the eyewitnesses maintained their testimony, even on pain of death.
These are the historical facts, and then the explanations begin (which are many). But a Christian is someone who considers the alternative theories—he didn’t die, his body was stolen, the disciples faked it, or they hallucinated—and judges them to be much less satisfactory, all things considered. It’s not that Christians force themselves to believe the most improbable explanation. It’s that if you reject the resurrection, you entangle yourself in more absurdity.
History since. The question we should all consider is why we’ve ever heard of Jesus. Why didn’t Christianity die with Christ on Good Friday, never to rise again? But Christianity didn’t remain dead and buried. Far from it. It has become, in the words of historian Tom Holland, “the most disruptive, the most influential and the most enduring revolution in history.” This is extraordinary when you consider its source.
It’s not that Christians force themselves to believe the most improbable explanation. It’s that if you reject the resurrection, you entangle yourself in more absurdity.
From a purely human perspective, Jesus was a penniless preacher, shooting his mouth off around some backwater of a long-dead empire. He was surrounded by losers and no-hopers. He was crucified in ignominy in his 30s. Yet he’s the most famous man who ever walked the planet. He’s built the world we live in. You may not believe Jesus turned water into wine, but here’s a miracle that’s difficult to deny: somehow Jesus has gone from godforsaken execution to world domination. How? Christians bring an explanation. Christianity rose from the dead because Christ did. Once again, this Easter faith isn’t brought forward to be embraced as an absurdity. It’s brought forward to explain an absurdity.
Finally, if you want to complete the journey to Easter faith, it must be personal.
Him
Comic book fans love to debate the relative strengths of their superheroes. They’ll ask, “Who would win in a fight between Iron Man and Batman?” Christians do something similar when they consider the ultimate matchup: Jesus versus death.
According to 1 Corinthians 15, death is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. It’s the “last enemy.” Without resurrection, death is Lord. But the passage goes on to declare death has met its match in Jesus. Christians know death has swallowed kings, armies, and empires. But we’ve encountered the Jesus of Scripture, and we’re persuaded he is Lord.
Whatever it is that brings everything from nothing, order from chaos, life from nonlife—whatever that generative power might be—Jesus embodies it. In the history of his incarnation, he has come to redeem and renew his world that’s been tumbling down to nothingness, chaos, and death. In other words, Jesus is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). And if he is this God of resurrection, then of course he conquered death. If he’s Lord, the truly remarkable thing would be if he rotted in some Jerusalem tomb.
Christians aren’t like the White Queen. Belief in the risen Jesus isn’t one more impossibility to believe before breakfast. On the contrary, the Christian looks at the heavens and at history and finds their most fitting fulfillment in him. Easter faith makes sense of a world that would otherwise be far, far more absurd. If, like Alice, you “can’t believe in impossible things,” then I invite you instead to believe in Jesus.
The Gospel Coalition