Comments/questions from our listeners and members prompt this deep-dive into this most important of Christian holidays

It’s always tempting to do a blog or episode every year on Christmas and on Easter. They’re both such easy, ready-made topics, with many obvious angles and discussion points. Bloggers and podcasters find them hard to resist. In almost 10 years of blogging and podcasting, I’ve only given in once. But this Easter season, several comments/questions from our listeners and our private Discussion group prompted us to weigh in on certain points:

• Bonnie, Ruth, and Joe: is Easter “just” a Christian appropriation of a Jewish holiday (Passover; Shabbatt) and/or of a secular/pagan spring celebration?
• Ruth: why hasn’t the traditional bread and wine in this “supper” been upgraded to chicken and fries?
• Merv: once one lets go of the ideas of “original sin” and penal substitution, what meaning is left in Christ’s death?
• Mi K.: I would be curious about how in his death he destroyed his enemy.
• Merv: how have others reformed the meaning of Easter?
• Scott: Christ became the perfect Jew, fulfilling the covenant with Abraham/Israel
• Luke: Christ needed to show humans the way to overcome reptilian thinking and achieve humanity 2.0
• Luke: God owed a debt to the devil?
• Edward: since Christ knew he was going to be resurrected, it wasn’t the same kind of sacrifice as a human with literally only one life to lose.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like episodes #18 (Original Sin), #82 (Jesus: Jewish Messiah) and #79 (humans evolving toward humanity 2.0).

Episode image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

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