I grew up in a strict, fundamentalist Christian tradition. Most churches in my denomination didn’t celebrate Christmas and Easter (though that is now changing) because they were deemed pagan vestiges that had been arbitrarily Christianized by the apostate Catholic Church.
My family embraced those holidays, but my church did not — so much so that at church we’d sometimes defiantly sing Christmas carols out of season, just to demonstrate our theological independence. (“Silent Night” doesn’t land quite the same when you sing it in the middle of July. Neither does “Joy to the World.”)
I never quite believed our exclusive theology, at least not all of it. But I hadn’t been exposed to the alternatives. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I encountered historic Christianity as a curious adult, not as a child who couldn’t fully comprehend what I was seeing. The practices of other churches were all new to me, and one in particular changed me forever.
My first year in law school, when I was 23 years old, I went to an Easter Vigil. Or, to be more precise, an evangelical version of the Catholic Service of Light. The church of the smoke machine can sometimes imitate the church of incense.
It began in darkness — symbolizing the darkness of death during the days after Christ’s crucifixion — and then the pastor lit a candle. High church Christians — Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, for example — may recognize this as the paschal candle, the symbol of Christ’s resurrection.
For a time, only the paschal candle penetrated the gloom, but then — as we sang hymns of praise — we picked up our own candles and one by one lit them with the flame from the paschal candle. Christ’s light became our light. Christ’s life became our life. By the end of the service, the entire church was ablaze with light.
I know there are readers who are rolling their eyes in disbelief and others who are thinking, “Well thanks, David, for describing something I’ve done my whole life.” But for me, it was a revelation.
Christians aren’t the only people who believe that man has a soul, that this life is not the sum total of our existence. We do, however, make a startling assertion, that God himself defeated death — that he entered into history, lived on this earth, was crucified and then returned to life. He demonstrated his mastery over death by appearing to many people, who shared their accounts of his crucifixion and resurrection. They say they saw him die and then live again.
If this is true, it changes everything. If we truly are created in the image of God, then his life becomes our life. We are not gods, of course, but we are eternal beings. The curse of Adam — “for dust you are and to dust you will return” — is broken by the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ.
Or, as C.S. Lewis wrote, Christ “has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so.”
Before that service, I had always recognized this theological reality in personal terms: Christ’s sacrifice gave me the hope of eternal life. But there was something about that roomful of candles that touched my heart. It elevated the dignity and worth of every person in that room.
When you interact with a friend, with a neighbor, even an enemy, you are meeting a person who possesses an eternal soul. We are not meeting a talking animal, a person who is here today and gone tomorrow.
This is one reason I’m as stricken as I am when I see cruelty in the name of Christ. It’s one reason that, of all the sins I regret, I regret my own cruelty the most.
The book of Isaiah — written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus — contains a beautiful description of the character of the coming Messiah. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick,” it says, “he will not snuff out.”
I don’t know if the United States is in the midst of anything like a true religious revival. It does seem, at the very least, that the long decline in American Christianity has slowed, if not stopped. There is anecdotal evidence seemingly everywhere of a surge of interest in faith. I see it especially on college campuses, where students are constantly asking me about my own beliefs.
I think I know why.
I’ve been writing for years about the rise in American polarization and the rise in mental health problems. I just wrote about how parents are less concerned about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll (the vices of generations past) than they are about their kids’ anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. We live in a nation of unprecedented prosperity, but we are not thriving. Instead, we struggle to feel like equal members of a society that is orienting itself to cater to the desires of a very wealthy minority.
Another way of putting it is that we have become a nation of smoldering wicks. We struggle to feel hope. We struggle to feel purpose. We look at the world around us and ask: “Is this all there is? Is this really what it looks like to live in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world?”
But it is in moments exactly like this one when the light from that single paschal candle shines so brightly. It’s the light that symbolically declares that this is not all there is and that our eternal existence will outshine our present grief and pain. Recognizing that spark of eternity in ourselves and others helps heal that grief and pain.
Every Easter I think about the people I’ve lost. I think of the friend who died of colon cancer. I think of the men I served with in Iraq who never came home.
I’ve written about Michael Medders before. He might have been the most beloved officer in our unit. I never met a person who didn’t love Mike. A former football player, he was the strongest of us. He was relentlessly cheerful and funny. He was ready with a joke even after an I.E.D. blast. He was one of those people you just felt was invincible — right until a suicide bomber took his life on Sept. 24, 2008.
Almost three years later, in the summer of 2011, my friends and I gathered in his hometown, Avon Lake, Ohio, to spend time with his family, to honor Mike’s memory. As we visited Mike’s grave, one of my friends spoke as if he was standing right there beside us.
“Hi Mike,” he said. “We miss you.”
I think about that greeting all the time. It was a profound declaration of faith: Death was not the end. Mike’s light still burns. We will see him again.
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