There are many ways in which secular atheism is demonstrating itself to be a wholly inadequate view of the world. There is its caustic effect on human relationships, as its elevation of power and grievance over love and responsibility drives people apart and destroys families and society. There is its appalling vacuum of meaning and value, which cannot be filled with self-help, sex and Amazon Prime. And there is the nonsense of its logical conclusions, with transgenderism in pole position: a philosophy which teaches that what we are is entirely self-defined is one which has performed on itself a neat reductio ad absurdum. Its ludicrous outputs demonstrate that its fundamental premises are false. Garbage in, garbage out, as data scientists say.
But these flaws in the edifice of secularism, serious though they are, are relative latecomers. Two thousand years ago it was fatally undermined — in advance — by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
When the first Christians began proclaiming Christ crucified and risen, they landed a missile into the foundations of ancient paganism. Something had occurred which rendered the belief systems of that world utterly obsolete; an event which simply could not have happened if the world was the kind of place which they envisaged it to be. And Easter does the same for the prevailing beliefs of our day as well. For the resurrection of Jesus demonstrates and declares — against everything that both ancient pagans and modern secularists have believed and taught — that this world is made, and that it is being remade.
First, Easter demonstrates that the world is made. Make no mistake, Christianity has never taught that Jesus rose from the dead because such things are possible. It is utterly impossible: even that a dead body could be temporarily resuscitated, let alone raised to a glorious life beyond death as Jesus was. It is its impossibility according to every law of nature which makes it so significant. And so those who met the risen Jesus realised immediately that what had just taken place was an act of creation enacted from outside of this universe as we know it; an event at least on a par with the creation of the world, of humanity, of the universe, in the first place.
Easter has revealed this world to be full of purpose, flowing from the God who made it
And therefore the entire pagan account of where the world came from, emerging kind of accidentally out of chaos via successive episodes of violence and strife — an account shared rather closely by modern secular cosmology and anthropology — is fundamentally in error. Easter could not have happened in such a world. Rather, we and the world we inhabit must have been designed, assembled, and given life by a personal God who was here before us and is infinitely above us. Personhood precedes matter, not the other way round. Gods did not emerge within this world; one God created and rules this world by his external, creative power. He still does. He has demonstrated it by raising Christ from the dead.
This forces a total recalibration of our understanding of the human experience. We are not simply an accidental product of the struggle to emerge from chaos; we are rather the deliberate design of a good creator, with a nobility inherent in our humanity no-one in the ancient world ever imagined. And the travails and tragedies of this life are not the lingering effect of ultimate, primordial chaos, but rather are alien to what we are supposed to be; a degradation from our good design. They are in fact symptoms and results of a moral dislocation from our maker. That moral dislocation never anywhere demonstrated more clearly or horrifically than on Good Friday. Our creator came into the world to meet us; and we killed him. So we are not heroic figures, bravely fighting the forces of chaos to survive and perhaps rise above them. We are tragic creatures, made by God for infinite glory, but ruined by our own wickedness, pride, and hatred of him.
Which leads to the second great message of Easter. Not only that the world is made, but that it is being remade. It certainly exposes the foolish pride and appalling evil of our race; but it does so via God’s triumph over both. Christ’s resurrection, said the Apostle Paul, is the firstfruits of those who have died. It will flow out from him to all who belong to him. In his death and resurrection he has destroyed evil at its root. And so his resurrection is the beginning of the remaking of all things. His glorious new life, his total defeat of death, he will powerfully share with all who come to him. Those who have encountered Jesus Christ after his resurrection know both that this world is not all that there is, and that it is not how it will remain. God has stepped into the world to redeem it.
This is why the Apostle Paul also said that God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead”. Jesus’ resurrection is a proclamation to the world that he is the one who will finally put the world right: who will return to sift and judge, forgive and repair, to create out of the ruins of this world a kingdom which will last forever.
That of course is the vision which drove Christian civilisation for a millennium and a half. Yes, this world is broken, and we’re fools if we think that any of us has it in our power to mend it. But it is neither meaningless nor hopeless. Easter has revealed it to be full of purpose, flowing from the God who made it; and full of hope, looking forward to the day when he will remake it. Christians live as those who, like Christian worship, architecture and music, strain in this fallen world to look upwards to the risen Christ in heaven and forwards to the risen Christ returning. We aim to do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, both because it is right — God’s world is inescapably under his rule — and because it is the future. Christians are citizens of an age to come, an age which will be purified and perfected by the sufferings and triumph of Jesus Christ. And so we are to live like it here and now.
Secularism has simply nothing to offer in comparison to this. Its creed of personal freedom and self-discovery is as empty as it is groundless, and as groundless as it is destructive. But most of all, like all man-made religions, it cannot stand before the power of Easter. The resurrection of the Son of God destroys all views of the world that have no space for such a thing. God has announced beyond the possibility of refutation, by raising his crucified Son from the dead, that he is God over this world, and he is reclaiming it for himself.
