Growing up in a southern church, every Easter there was one hymn you had to sing: a waltzy little ditty called “He Lives”. At the end of the chorus we’d all exclaim, “You ask me how I know He lives – He lives within my heart!”
As I entered my college years, that explanation ceased to satisfy my skeptical mind. With all my intellectual questions about the Bible, just saying I know Jesus is real because “He’s set up housekeeping in one of my internal organs” wasn’t enough.
To a cynical, doubting collegian, it seemed like a romanticized copout. I was asking really important questions. Is the resurrection story of Jesus really true? Or is it just wishful thinking?
Those questions matter because if Jesus didn’t really rise from the grave, neither will I. If He’s not alive now in heaven, there’s no chance I’ll make it there either.
Now after years of studying the history around the resurrection, I see there are many good reasons to believe. The evidence for Christ’s resurrection, though circumstantial, is actually incredibly strong. Skeptics like C.S. Lewis and Chicago Tribune reporter Lee Strobel both started off hoping to disprove Christianity only to end up converts. I challenge you to prove any other event from that era of history better than apologists support their claim that Jesus physically rose from the dead.
But if I were honest, my atheist friends can still probably give you just as many reasons to doubt as I have to believe. Like most important decisions in life, believing in Easter Sunday is ultimately a matter of faith. If you want to believe, there are great reasons to do so. But if you want to doubt, you’ll find enough loose ends to back up your skepticism.
That leap of faith is actually rather important. Why? So that believing is never compulsory. The gray area allows you to choose.
If instead we could look in a telescope and see God waving to us from space, we’d all be idiots not to worship Him. In fact, we’d probably do so out of fear alone. Instead, God has left enough “plausible deniability” in our world so that only those who want to see the light will run toward it. Those with their eyes tightly shut can still swear there’s nothing but darkness.
Some say, “Dave, when you can scientifically prove He exists, I’ll believe.” Sorry, God’s not going to allow that. He has plant clues in our world, like a million Easter Eggs hidden in plain sight. But you can still choose to walk past them with your head in the air. What you ignore will be snatched up by the other kids and stuffed in their own baskets.
When all the arguments are over, I’m beginning to see the wisdom in that old hymn. I’ve discovered there are many simpler proofs that Jesus is alive. For the sake of brevity, here’s just one…
Ann is in her late 80s and has spent years teaching the Bible to inmates. Her classes were often busting at the seams with prisoners hoping to bask in the overflow of her joyful demeanor. But I know something about Ann none of her students knew. Years ago, her own adult daughter was brutally murdered. In her desire to embody Christ’s forgiveness, she befriended the very murderer behind bars that killed her daughter. She then dedicated her life to loving other inmates as her life’s work.
That’s a story I’ve heard repeated thousands of times over, only with different names and faces. People whose lives have been radically transformed by a Middle Eastern Jew some folks claim has been dead for nearly 2000 years now. But for a dead Messiah, He’s still very busy performing miracles even to this day.
That’s something I’ve experienced myself. My story may not be as dramatic, but the transformation has been just as real. I’ve experienced this carpenter from Nazareth working in my own life. Not merely in symbolic glosses, but in measurable, trajectory-altering ways.
In fact, while I don’t want to sound arrogant, I’m pretty sure there is nothing you could say that would convince me Jesus is not still very much alive. Like that old hymn said, “He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way”. It’s pretty hard to doubt someone’s existence you spend time with every day.
Seriously, you might as well tell me my wife doesn’t exist.
The best evidence that Jesus is alive is found in the lives of His committed followers today. So feel free to add my voice with theirs on that final chorus…
“You ask me how I know He lives – he lives within my heart!”
