From Timothy Keller’s book ‘The Reason for God’:
My question—that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide—was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man . . . a question without an answer to which one cannot live. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything?” It can also be expressed thus: Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ~Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
When I was studying philosophy and religion in college, I was taught that the resurrection of Jesus was a major historical problem, no matter how you looked at it. Most modern historians made the philosophical assumption that miracles simply cannot happen, and that made the claim of the resurrection highly problematic. However, if you disbelieved the resurrection you then had the difficulty of how the Christian church got started at all.
Several years ago I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. It was treatable and was removed successfully with surgery and other therapy. However, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, the “cancer” word pronounced over you under any circumstances concentrates the mind wonderfully. During my treatment I discovered N. T. Wrights’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, the latest historical scholarship on Jesus’s resurrection. I read it with great attention. It became quite clear to me how much more than a historical, philosophical issue this was. It is that, but it is much more. If it happened, it changes our lives completely.
Sometimes people approach me and say, “I really struggle with this aspect of Christian teaching. I like this part of Christian belief, but I don’t think I can accept that part.” I usually respond: “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” That is how the first hearers felt who heard reports of the resurrection. They knew that if it was true it meant we can’t live our lives any way we want. It also meant we don’t have to be afraid of anything, not Roman swords, not cancer, nothing. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything. ~Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (New York, N. Y. Penquin Random House L.L.C, New York, N.Y.) 209-11
