Good Friday

Today is Good Friday.

It is the day that we remember the crucifixion of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He died on the cross as propitiation for our sins, and through His work on the cross, we are now reconciled with God and have eternal life.

``But MT, this does not make any sense! There is no scientific evidence to prove any of your statements here!''

If I were trying to convince someone [who values the scientific method] with my statement, then I admit that there are no scientific evidence that can be provided ever, for the simple reason that Christ's entering of the world (as divinity entering humanity through history, as Pastor likes to remind us) is an event that cannot be replicated/repeated the way scientific experiments can be. There are many different types of evidence out there, and each of them serve a slightly different purpose in how and what it is that they can support the claims.

God is Creator (another unprovable statement within science), and as such He is situated outside of the natural world (much like how the system administrator of a Linux operating system sits outside of the operating system proper). He encompasses all that is knowable, eventually knowable, and never knowable, by us. He is as real to me as any phenomenon that has actual effects but unexplainable causes to you---the moniker ``God'' is what we have chosen to give Him while referring to Him. His own name for Himself is simply I AM, a simple logical axiomatic assertion that self-substantiates with no need for anything else within the logic framework.

To refuse Him is to refute that single statement that He is, and there will never be a way to prove/disprove that within the confines of what we have to work with. It is, in many senses of the word, a leap of faith, something that one has to make up their minds on to know it ``deep within their bones''.

``Okay MT, you don't have scientific evidence... fine. You claim historicity... then show me the historic evidence!''

The Holy Bible exists. It is the inspired Word of God that is without error. It holds Truth in it---the Truth of what it means to be a human in relation to the literal pinnacle of the Moral Good. The New Testament itself encompasses all that is to be said about Jesus, His Ministry and Mission, what happened after, and what will happen in the end. The remarkable thing about it all is the sheer lack of pomp and overall low-keyness of His work. He did not operate the way kings and other people of high places were ``supposed to'' operate befitting of their role---there were no big flashy parades, there was no hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, there was no demand that people adhere to man-made social rules that had no linkage with God's commandments, and more importantly, there was no distinction of who is to be saved and who isn't by birth---it was all by faith and faith alone.

Events in the New Testament can be matched with other contemporary sources to mark their historicity---scholars have been doing that for years now, and it would be a disservice of me to not acknowledge their efforts. If the New Testament did not stand up to the scrutiny of the work earnest scholars, then it would be the biggest news to hit everyone, considering the sheer number of people who claim to be Christians (cultural or otherwise).

``Okay... I suppose I could look up the scholars' works on the New Testament for historicity. What about the Old Testament and its whole lot of contradictions then?''

The Old Testament is the backdrop of who Jesus is (as well as the mission that He is given), and should be understood as a collection of many different types of writings. Some are more documentary of events (in which case, the moral message is not as the text writes, but as the text appeals to---the actual text records the actions of the parties involved), some are actual prophecies embedded in the record of actions taken by people, and some are songs that are sang by the people. Usually it is the pre-historical stuff that gets people grinding their gears (Genesis, specifically).

How does one conceive and record pre-history in a form that exemplifies the start of history? That in itself is a common problem, both in the Old Testament sense, and in a more regular and ``common'' scientific sense in the secular world. To be precise, even the modern treatment of pre-history is superlatively vague---the actual [physical] evidence that we have of pre-history is actually quite patchy, and the further we go back in time, the larger the spans of time between the samples of evidence that we base our inferences from, and all these under the twin assumptions of a 4.5 Ga Earth and 14 Ga universe. Part of the reason lies with the sensitivity of our detection methods---from the crudest of observations we can only surface the largest of events; with gradual refinements of said observations, we start to surface the more mundane. Eventually the sensitivity of our methods can unearth the most mundane of everyday existence, up to the entropic floor where natural processes wipe out all the other micro-evidence.

We get the benefit of updates over time, while the pre-historical stuff in the Old Testament do not. Hence, we are always seemingly applying the most up-to-date understandings against a piece of writing that has been around for longer than 1.5 ka---an unfair comparison, perhaps? More importantly though, the pre-historical account in Genesis serves as an introduction to the more important theme that the Old Testament wants to convey---that humankind are sinful with respect to the Moral Good that is God, and that God cannot not punish Sin due to His very nature.

As for the contradictions, it's just cherry-picking all the way down. Many love to poke fun at the Holy Bible by claiming contradictions by picking a single verse that says (for example) ``killing is bad'' (say Deuteronomy 5:17) and then pointing out that another says ``killing is justified'' (say Exodus 22:19 or something), and declaring a contradiction.

🤦‍♂️

Literal cherry-picking. I don't think I want/need to say more. For the confused, remember that any and all citations, no matter where, need to be taken in context for them to make sense. A single line conveying a thought may be part of a piece of satire (for example) that completely negates what the surface meaning is. In a similar way, just because a particular verse appears in the Holy Bible does not mean that it is a factual assertion---the type of writing that it is appearing in (recording of an event, prophecy, parable, poetry), as well as the immediate context in which the verse is embedded in, needs to be taken into account as well.

``Alright, alright... I can sense your annoyance, MT. But why are you talking about all these now? Are you trying to say something?''

In a way, yes. I am declaring myself as a disciple of Christ, in a fairly public way; and this is after my baptism some time back. But I am also declaring that this declaration is just my own, and that I have no intention of demanding that everyone submit to the same beliefs that I do. I would be happy to share whatever little I know with whomever is interested, bringing them to the more learned Christian when their interest goes beyond what I have comprehended and can explain, and defend my own beliefs to someone up to the point beyond which it is just bickering for the sake of bickering, but I will not follow the paths of those who rely on force and deceit to evangelise the Word of the Lord.

Because for Him, the means is as important as the ends.