The Conclusion
In summation, then, what we have here is a fresh, quite reasonable and Biblically sound alternative explanation of the Easter Story – one that can appeal to each & every person on the planet (regardless of his or her religious affiliation, or even his or her lack thereof) … It is also an explanation that happens to reconcile the moral conundrum of the innate callousness (if not downright cruelty) of conservative Christianity (i.e. a Jesus who Loves all and who preaches unconditional mercy, and yet a Jesus who was the only Son of God; who literally championed physical death by being resurrected from the grave; and yet who only gives a someday reward of similar immortality to those who choose to worship him appropriately). Perhaps most important to Christians, this tome’s explanation harmonizes the moral difficulties of the Bible not by blindly dismissing them (Hello, human secularists & “New Age” groupies), but rather by using the very words of the Bible itself.
And finally — and at least for me most importantly of all, this particular explanation shows by far the greatest reverence for the stout courage & gentle humility of Jesus we read in the Gospels. For while none of us will ever know the objective Truth related to the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion, there is no doubt that far more honor is given to Jesus when seeing him as a man of unassailable Purpose & self-sacrifice, as opposed to merely a Divine Being pre-destined to share & then suffer.
Indeed, when we compare these three vastly different interpretations of the New Testament with Jesus’ own ministry, it is easy to see that this treatise’s “Purposeful Swoon” theory –- the theory that Jesus organized his own crucifixion to provide his followers with one, final, flagrant example of The Way of joyful self-sacrifice — is the explanation of Jesus’ final days that is most in alignment with his own teachings in the Gospels; teachings that honor Love over the lover and the Giving over the giver; teachings that revere the Truth of the Way of Jesus’ Life – not Jesus himself..
Amen … Let it be so.
“The Christian religion has been persistently built up around the fact
of the death of Christ instead of around the Truth of his Life.
The most magnificent thing about Jesus leaving his tomb
is not his apparent resurrection from death, but rather the manner beforehand in which he rebirthed his living.” ~ inspired by Shane Claiborne
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