The Destruction of Easter in America, Essay Example

Introduction

Easter is in trouble. The holiday that should be a joyous celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins has become a spiritual wasteland, a consumer paradise of candy and bunny imagery. Once America was a truly great, Christian nation. She is still a Christian nation, despite all the efforts of particular interest groups to de-Christianize and secularize her, but the ongoing project of secularism and “multiculturalism” is taking its toll. The three most obnoxious and significant groups waging the War on Easter are the atheists, the Muslims, and the liberal-progressives. Easter must be reclaimed by Christian believers from the forces that threaten it as a commemoration of the Christian belief in the resurrection, the same forces that threaten Christianity’s place in America.

Atheists

The commercialization of Easter is bad enough. But the frivolous indulgences in candy and cute imagery aren’t enough for one particular group of perennial malcontents: militant atheists. Nothing is sacred for these God-mockers, who proudly proclaim their unbelief and contemptuously dismiss believers as delusional. For these people, it isn’t enough to simply not celebrate Easter: they have to go out of their way to attack how believers celebrate Easter, and what it means within the Christian faith. Then again, militant atheists in America are always attacking God, the Church, the Bible, and traditional family values, so it should come as no surprise that they have targeted Easter with one of their campaigns of agitation.

For this past Easter, the group Concerned Women for America (CWA) posted a special display at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. The display was designed to honor the true meaning of Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to advocate for equal rights for unborn babies (Marie, 2014; Dorstewitz, 2014). The fact that the display both honored Christ and took a stance against the practice of murder that is abortion was plenty to draw the atheists out of the woodwork, for all the world like yellow jackets to a barbecue. A militant atheist pressure group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) responded by posting a truly revolting message of its own: a gigantic banner mocking Jesus Christ and his followers. The banner read: “Nobody died for our sins. Jesus Christ is a myth. P.S.: Your god says, ‘Thou shalt not steal’” (Marie, 2014).

The FFRF’s own rationale for this disrespectful and childish fit of pique boiled down to nothing more than a ridiculous sense of being intimidated by the Cross. In the words of their own co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor: “’It’s unfortunate to see a sectarian symbol that is increasingly used as a symbol of political intimidation in our state capitol’” (FFRF, 2014). But Gaylor wasn’t done: she had to get in a crack at the traditional family for good measure. “’It’s also unfortunate to see women serving as a front for a patriarchal religion based on women’s subservience and second-class status’” (FFRF, 2014).

This is nothing more than militant godlessness wrapped up with left-wing gender politics and the hysterical cult of feminism. Gaylor’s claims about the women of CWA are a transparent attempt to discredit them based on their gender and the fact that they do not agree with her. No doubt if they had been men she would have chided them for trying to ‘subjugate’ women into a “patriarchal faith.” Any sensible person would think that the women of CWA are capable of speaking for themselves and for their faith. After all, as it says in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (NKJV, emphasis added).

While these godless troublemakers were technically following the law, as they obtained a permit for their disgusting display, it is still deeply troubling to see such disrespect and mockery of everything sacred (Marie, 2014; Chumley, 2014). The key thing to understand, though, is that contrary to their own pronouncements on the matter, atheists are actually extremely religious. As Sydney Anglican Archbishop Dr. Peter Jensen said in his 2010 Good Friday sermon, atheism is actually a form of idolatry (News.com.au, 2010). “’As we can see by the sheer passion and virulence of the atheist—they seem to hate the Christian God—we are not dealing here with cool philosophy up against faith without a brain,’” Dr. Jensen said (News.com.au, 2010).

The atheists love to peddle the line that they are the ones who see reality as it actually is, and of course this makes them smarter, hipper, and generally more “edgy” than the presumably stodgy, staid, stupid Christian believers who blindly persist in worshiping an absurdly mythical deity. This is nonsense, and every single thing the atheists do or say in public to identify themselves as atheists proves it. If they were truly content and secure in their lack of belief in God, they would not need to be constantly in the faces of everyone who does believe in God.

To really get this, compare how the atheists recruit with how Christians seek to spread the Word. Christians send out missionaries to take the Gospel to others, the idea being to present it to them and give them a chance to respond. As Christ Himself said, “’Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’” (Matthew 28:19, NKJV). This is how Christians are supposed to go about it: give other people a chance to hear the Word and decide if they want to become Christ-followers. If they refuse, we let God deal with them, and we pray that the Holy Spirit will use any seed we might have planted in their hearts to someday turn them toward Christ.

This is precisely what the CWA did at the capitol: they were doing their part to help fulfill the Great Commission and call Americans to repentance from the national sin of abortion. No one had to pay that display any attention if they did not wish to; if it bothered them, they were free to ignore it. The message of Christ’s loving sacrifice for the sins of a fallen humanity was proclaimed, along with the call to protect what are surely the most vulnerable members of any society—unborn children—and that was that.

Atheists, on the other hand, have to be in other people’s faces, if their own words and actions are anything to go by here. Where Christians have a message of hope and salvation to proclaim, atheists have only a spiritually hollow and intellectually shallow and pretentious critique of Christianity and other faiths. Because of this, they have nothing else to go on. Hating God and belittling His people is their only strategy because it is the line of “thinking” that defines them. They are the very definition of one-trick ponies: their whole belief system is consumed by their obsessive quest to oppose God and His people.

This is the difference: Christians proclaim the most positive message imaginable, the message that God exists, loves His creation, and sacrificed Himself for the remission of our sins so that we might be restored to right relations with Him. What do the atheists have to offer instead? An utterly revolting, rude, and patently juvenile banner proclaiming that nobody died for our sins, and that Jesus Christ is a myth. Christians offer a chance to experience God’s love; atheists offer a chance to look down on other people with sneers and cold contempt, and to generally get in people’s faces about their self-proclaimed superiority.

The underlying reason for atheists’ terrible behavior, Dr. Jensen argued, is an idolatry that constitutes self-worship (News.com.au, 2010). “’It represents the latest version of the human assault on God, born out of resentment that we do not in fact rule the world and that God calls on us to submit our lives to him’” (News.com.au, 2010). Dr. Jensen is right: atheists are worshipping at a golden calf of their own devising, an idol that, like all idols, ultimately represents the worship of self. In the 20^th century alone, Dr. Jensen explained, godless idolatry gave us “’Nazism, Stalinism, Pol Pot-ery, mass murder, abortion and broken relationships’” (News.com.au, 2010). Idolatry is listed with the “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5:19-21, along with “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,” and then “sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like” (NKJV).

Of course, the Scripture also tells us what the Spirit-filled life looks like: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 3:22-23). This life has been made possible by Christ’s sacrifice: “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:24-25, NKJV). We are able to overcome the self because of what Christ did on the Cross, and because of His resurrection on the third day. This is why we celebrate Easter, and this is why the atheists are wrong. God exists, and Easter is the day on which we celebrate Him saving us from our own sinful, fallen selves. By cleaving to the true meaning of Easter, we can counter the spiritual darkness of selfish, idolatrous atheism, and be a true light to the world and a city upon the hill (Matthew 5:14).

Muslims

Another group that has emerged to attack Easter in recent years is the followers of the so-called “Religion of Peace.” As a description of Islam, “Religion of Peace” is about as ironic as calling Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany the “Nation of Peace,” as the events of the last 13 years (or the last 1,400) prove. The radical Muslims, the ones who are honest about their religion really says, savagely slaughter Christians, Jews, and anyone else they deem to be infidels. However, even those Muslims who are not so honest with themselves about what their vile religion preaches can still pose a threat to America’s Christian heritage and traditions, in service to creeping sharia law.

This very year, a kerfuffle erupted in the Dearborn Public Schools district when a Muslim family took offense to, of all things, an Easter egg hunt. The problem was that the Easter egg hunt had been scheduled at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church in Dearborn. The father, Majed Moughni, said that the flyers made his children uncomfortable because of the church connection (Warikoo, 2014). Of course, Heaven forbid that an Easter egg hunt should be held at—gasp—a church! Never mind that the church context did not involve a Christian service. Never mind the fact that the flyers and the event were approved by Dearborn Public Schools. Never mind any of that, the mere fact that it was at a church meant it was offensive!

The pastor of the church, Pastor Neeta Nichols, was very clear that there was no part of the activity that involved an actual Christian message, a sad commentary on how far the project to secularize and commercialize Easter has come (Warikoo, 2014). “’It’s designed to be an opportunity to invite the community to come for a day of activity,’” Nichols said (Warikoo, 2014). It would seem that not even a secular, fairly godless Easter egg hunt is safe from Muslim outrage.

As Pamela Geller (2014) pointed out, this latest exercise in Muslim grievance-mongering is an effort to impose Islamic supremacy de facto, and it is only one part of a much larger strategy. Even before this absurd controversy, Dearborn Public Schools had already caved to many creeping sharia demands. “Dearborn Public Schools have implemented a policy which fully accommodates student-led [Muslim] prayer in all the schools, as well as unexcused absences for students who leave early on Fridays for Jumu’ah prayers” (Geller, 2014). At every turn, Dearborn’s capitulations to Muslim students’ demands have simply generated fresh demands. Not that any of this is surprising, of course, given Islam’s program of domination: the entire point is to conquer American culture slowly, from within. This slow process, often called creeping sharia, calls to mind the anecdote about the frog who does not realize he is being slowly boiled in a pot of water, because the temperature is turned up only a little at a time.

In civilized countries, Muslims must operate by stealth, slowly seeking to impose their project of domination on the host culture. In their own countries, however, Muslims can act with far fewer restraints against Christian minorities—and the results are chilling. Back in 2005, a group of armed Muslims in Khambay, a village in Pakistan, attacked a Christian church service (WND, 2005). The attack took the life of one Christian, a man named Arshad Masih, and wounded six others. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident: in Easter of this year, in Nigeria, the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram stepped up its ongoing program of savage attacks against Christians just in time for Easter week (Carl, 2014). It was in the course of this wave of attacks that the barbaric jihadists swept down on a Nigerian town called Chibok and infamously kidnapped 200 girls. Of course, not content with their savageries in the northeastern part of Nigeria, Boko Haram militants have also carried out attacks in the nation’s capital of Abuja (Carl, 2014).

Scripture tells us that we should expect this kind of anti-Christian hostility from those who are committed to opposing the One True God in the name of false gods. As the Psalmist says: “Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing?” (Psalms 2:1, NKJV). Psalm 2 is a beautiful declaration of how God deals with defiance from rebellious and idolatrous peoples: He sets them at naught. And as Christ said, “’Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 5:10, NKJV). Today Muslims persecute Christians whenever they are able, much as the pagans of the Roman Empire did during the days of the early Church. However, Easter reminds Christian believers of the hope that we have in Christ, and that hope is worth celebrating and defending.

Liberals

In addition to atheists and Muslims, liberals (or progressives) pose a considerable threat to America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and the traditional celebration of Easter. The liberal-progressive “War on Easter,” a term coined by none other than Bill O’Reilly, is in many ways part and parcel of the godless, atheist assault on anything having to do with faith. Like the atheists, liberals will claim the mantle of “secularism” when it is conveniently in their interest to do so, which in practice means anytime they want to suppress an expression of Christian belief (Hallowell, 2013).

However, liberal-progressives are not all atheists, although most militant atheists are liberal-progressives of some stripe. This is why liberals are so frequently willing to whine about how Muslims are perceived in the West, as part of their broader program to impose “tolerance” and politically correct degeneracy on America. A recent event actually demonstrates the difference between the godless, militant atheist position and the latte-sipping liberal-progressive position. In early October of this year, the generally obnoxious Bill Maher actually did something useful for once: he had bleeding-heart actor Ben Affleck and radical, militant atheist writer Sam Harris on his show, and he had them talk about Islam. Both Maher and Harris, to their credit, took a strong stance against the barbarism of the Muslim world, and—also to their credit—argued that liberals are inconsistent to the degree that they do not criticize Muslims. Harris, a man who has made his career attacking God and faith, still had the consistency to call out the odious and pernicious myth of Islamophobia. As if on cue, and to prove that both Harris and Maher were right for once, Affleck piped up and said that Harris’s statements about Muslims were “gross and racist” (Lowry, 2014; Feldman, 2014).

This is the liberal program: nothing less than a full-fledged assault on the Christian, patriotic traditions of America. Anything having to do with Christianity, or anything having to do with taking pride in America and working to defend it, is anathema to them. What they offer instead is not necessarily atheism, but rather a crackpot, half-baked ideology of “tolerance” and “diversity,” generally packaged under those labels, but also referred to in terms of “multiculturalism.” The liberal-progressive, who may or may not be an atheist, is a fervent devotee of a whole raft of social and political positions designed to wage war upon Christianity, from gay marriage to hysterical, militant feminism to multiculturalism, and more besides.

As Bill O’Reilly explained, the liberal-progressive project is a secular one, at least when it does not involve enabling creeping sharia (Hallowell, 2014). Their model seems to be the Scandinavian countries, long-time bastions of socialism, secularism, mass immigration, and now creeping sharia. This is why the liberal-progressive lobby wages war on Christianity: because America is a Christian country and has always been, destroying the power of Christianity in American society is a necessary step if a (generally) secular but still “diverse” and “multicultural” ideology can be imposed. The liberals use political correctness as their way of imposing their feelings and sensitivities on other people. It is this process that is increasingly seeing all references to “Easter” replaced with “spring” in the public schools (Medina, 2011; Hallowell, 2014). It is no longer acceptable for children to celebrate “Easter” in schools, because that would be too Christian! As the Scripture says: “If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ… he is proud, knowing nothing” (1 Timothy 6:3-4, NKJV). This is an excellent description of the liberal-progressives and their mindset: they are passionately opposed to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they are self-righteous and conceited in their commitment to “tolerance” of everyone except Christians. Defending the true meaning of Easter requires calling these people out and not allowing them to claim the moral high ground.

Conclusion

Atheists, Muslims, and liberal-progressives all attack Easter because it is a symbol of something they cannot stand. They may have very little else in common, but destroying America’s Christian values and heritage is certainly more than enough to encourage them all to do some of the same things. Atheists are motivated by their idolatry, an idolatry that constitutes self-worship; Muslims have been deceived by Satan and are worshiping a false god, and liberal-progressives are for the most part either atheists or adherents to either New Age “spiritual” teachings, or else moderate, lukewarm versions of Christianity. In fact, all three groups have been deceived by Satan (John 8:44, 2 Corinthians 11:13-14; 2 Timothy 2:26). Because they have been deceived, all of these groups attack Christianity as the light of the One True God in a sinful, darkened world.

The most famous Bible verse is easily John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (NKJV). It is such a commonly referenced Bible verse that it is easy to forget how powerful the truth that it proclaims is. The truth is that there is a God, contrary to the sneers and gibes of the atheists. Unlike the harsh, demanding and cruel false god of Islam, the One True God is a God of love, although He cannot stand sin. Unlike the wishy-washy “multicultural” approach to “spirituality” advocated by liberal-progressives who are not also atheists, the approach taken by the One True God in His Word is absolute, and contains both judgment and grace. As Paul declares: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23, NKJV). It is the good news of this gift that believers are called by God to share with the entire world, even though some will revile us for doing so. By standing firm in Christ against the forces of darkness, believers can reclaim Easter in our communities, and preach the glory of God to a fallen world.

References

Carl, M. (2014, April 16). Muslim violence surges for Easter week. WND. Retrieved from http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/muslim-violence-surges-for-easter-week/

Chumley, C. K. (2014, April 16). Atheists’ Easter taunt to Christians: ‘Jesus is a myth’. Washington Times. Retrieved from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/16/atheist-group-sets-own-easter-display-jesus-christ/

Dorstewitz, M. (2014, April 19). Easter brings out atheists contempt for Christians in ‘repugnant’ banner. Biz Pac Review. Retrieved from http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/04/19/easter-brings-out-atheists-contempt-for-christians-in-repugnant-banner-113456

Feldman, J. (2014, September 26). Maher tears into PC liberals: Where’s your outrage on violent, oppressive Islam? Media Ite. Retrieved from http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-tears-into-pc-liberals-wheres-your-outrage-on-violent-oppressive-islam/

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Geller, P. (2014, April 04). Dearborn: Muslim parents angry over Easter egg hunt school flyer. Pamela Geller. Retrieved from http://pamelageller.com/2014/04/muslim-parents-angry-easter-egg-hunt-school-flyer.html/

Hallowell, B. (2013, March 22). Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham issue dire warning about secular progressivism and America’s future. The Blaze. Retrieved from http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/22/bill-oreilly-and-laura-ingraham-issue-dire-warning-about-secular-progressivism-and-americas-future/

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Marie, B. (2014, April 17). Atheists put anti-Easter sign in Capitol building: ‘Nobody died for our sins, Jesus Christ is a myth.’ Christian Today. Retrieved from http://www.christiantoday.com/article/atheists.place.anti.easter.sign.capitol.building.after.christians.put.cross.and.anti.abortion.literature.display/36870.htm

Medina, V. (2011, April 24). When liberals attack! The War on Easter. Examiner.com. Retrieved from http://www.examiner.com/article/when-liberals-attack-the-war-on-easter

News.com.au. (2010, April 03). Atheists are believers who hate God, says Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen. News.com.au. Retrieved from http://www.news.com.au/national/atheists-are-believers-who-hate-god-says-anglican-archbishop-peter-jensen/story-e6frfkvr-1225848927144

Warikoo, N. (2014, April 04). Muslim parent upset over school flyer promoting church’s Easter egg hunt. Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from http://www.freep.com/article/20140404/NEWS05/304040016/Muslim-parents-upset-over-flier-promoting-Easter-egg-hunt-at-church

WND. (2005, March 30). Muslims attack Easter service. WND. Retrieved from http://www.wnd.com/2005/03/29589/