He is risen!

[Uncle Sparky]

when He heard Ben had joined the seminary JC had some serious second thoughts about rising this year

It was a sunny day in Winnipeg, so Jesus probably saw his shadow and winter is over!!!

....as for the April 1 joke - Luke 23:34

[Imran Siddiqui]

He is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!

[I AM MOBIUS]

I thought that this was Nikolai celebrating that his bosom buddy BK was allowed to post on poly again - which is just as plausible as JC rising again...

[Sava]

perhaps they merely finished their altar boy rape room and need to disguise their true celebration

[I AM MOBIUS]

Is Nikolai the altar boy in this scenario?

PS Easter is awesome because I got to eat a chocolate Darth Vader head!

[Bereta_Eder]

[Elok]

Strictly speaking, the Resurrection is an eternal event--we say "He is risen" and not "He has risen" b/c God's salvation transcends the ordinary rules of time and space. Every day is an intersection with eternity. When we say "He is risen," we are not commemorating some dusty historical event as an interesting retrospective, but recognizing that even today is an echo of that first dawn visit to the tomb. The important thing is not that one man died at one time, and that that man's tomb was found empty a short time later, but the fact that the death and the tomb mean the power of death is forever broken.

At least, that's the kind of thing the priests like to say. On the other hand, you Western *****es were still a week early, so get with the program.

[DaShi]

Yay, more pretension!

[Lorizael]

This thread seems like as good a place as any for my question.

So I'm taking a medieval history course this semester, and we've just gotten to a bit about Christian persecution of Jews. Accusations of blood libel and host desecration, slaughtering Jews on the way to Jerusalem while crusading, making them wear distinctive clothes, all that jazz. But there's one part of the whole Christian antisemitism thing that I've never really understood. That is...

...why is Christ's crucifixion a bad thing? (Antisemitic) Christians "blame" Jews for killing Jesus (for some reason forgetting the Romans) and thus don't like Jews. (We're ignoring the many possible nonreligious aspects of why there was persecution of Jews here.) Except that without Christ's crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, there is no washing away of sin and no chance of salvation through Christ and no Christianity at all. So why is killing Jesus a blameworthy event that "justifies" some really ****ed up behavior later on?

[DaShi]

You answered your own question. It's antisemitic propaganda.

[Lorizael]

I mean, I get that it's propaganda, but I'm trying to give antisemites the benefit of the doubt by assuming there is some coherence to their hatred. It seems entirely plausible to me that there is a slightly more complex (and consistent) explanation for why the Jews killing Jesus was a bad thing that isn't good sound bite material.

[kentonio]

You're looking for logical consistency in religion? Seriously?

[DaShi]

Or in bigotry, for that matter. I don't think you're going to find a rational answer for this one, Lori.

[Elok]

You're ignoring the distinction between the effects of one's actions and one's intentions in doing them there. I mean, I can't speak for the medieval types here, and they ignored the part where the Jews they were killing were the distant relations of the ones who did the killing--but even that's not really inconsistent, at least in the West where they held to the Augustinian conception of Original Sin. If everyone is somehow to blame for one guy eating an apple millennia ago, all Jews bearing the guilt of their ancestors isn't much of a stretch. I guess. Anyway, these people were not consequentialists or utilitarians. The good or evil of an action was dependent on its intentions, not its outcome. And in that very limited sense I agree with them; if I try to shoot up a school, but through rank incompetence bring an unloaded gun and thus cause no harm, that does not make my actions morally neutral.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.