What’s So Good about It?

Today is called Good Friday on the traditional Christian calendar.

One person regards one day holier than other days, and another regards them all alike. Each must be fully convinced in his own mind. (Romans 14:5 NET)

I am not oblivious to the popular seasonal celebrations. No one has to tell me that God mandated in the Law Covenants certain ritual celebrations on certain days of the year. Nor does anyone have to tell me that the New Testament stood some of the Law on its head. For example, there was the reversal of several issues like divorce and or even something so simple as whether a man should cover his head in worship.

The Law Covenants were a contextual reflection or manifestation of cosmic reality. Observe the meaning of the Law and you are working with Creation. Resist the Laws and you will be fighting Creation. God offered a plausible deniability for those who insist there is no God (in terms of His revelation). We can’t pretend to explain how all of that works, but we do know that if you don’t volunteer, the Laws mean nothing in your life.

The holiday (“holy days”) aren’t meaningless to me, but they also don’t rate highly on my consciousness. I’m pretty much the kind of person Paul described in that verse in Romans who is too busy pursuing holiness in every moment to give much emphasis to special days. I tend to ignore my own birthday, so don’t be surprised if I ignore yours. I’m not ignoring you, but I’m giving an awful lot of focus to God’s Presence in my soul and that tends to crowd out other things. It’s not a question of what’s right or wrong but how I am obliged to operate.

The context is where Paul is telling the Roman believers not to sweat the small stuff. Plenty of things matter and one of the main points is recognizing what God emphasized. The record of revelation makes clear that some things are not up for personal interpretation because those variations didn’t come from God. Yes, there are some parts of the Law Covenants that apply to everyone everywhere forever on this earth. We have enough of that already, thank you, so we don’t need to imagine the other things have to apply just to make it easy for us to figure out (see 2 Timothy 2:15).

We can righteously give people room on some issues. One of those issues is marking special days. It should not be a doctrine either way. It’s tied to personality traits not subject to human adjustments, but a character showing the unique mark of God’s dealing in someone’s life.

Apparently this was a significant sore point in some of the congregations across the landscape in those days, because Paul addresses this again in yet another letter:

He has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you with respect to food or drink, or in the matter of a feast, new moon, or Sabbath days – these are only the shadow of the things to come, but the reality is Christ! Let no one who delights in humility and the worship of angels pass judgment on you. That person goes on at great lengths about what he has supposedly seen, but he is puffed up with empty notions by his fleshly mind. He has not held fast to the head from whom the whole body, supported and knit together through its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.

If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit to them as though you lived in the world? (Colossians 2:14-20 NET)

Notice that “humility” in this context is not proof of anything. You can manufacture that and it’s not a bad discipline. But by itself it proves nothing to anyone else. Humble people can still be murderous thugs, depending on what it is they are humble about. The point here is being able to see beyond the level of the flesh, to have a spiritual perception that is hard to put in words. You notice there is a bit of parabolic language in this passage. The mark of the Spirit is a focus on things that can’t be put in words, much less be made into doctrines and rules.

I recognize the mythology behind the term Easter itself and the business of eggs and bunnies, etc. It isn’t Christian, but has been adopted by Western Christianity for the most part. So it is with Christmas trees and bunch of other garbage. Those things aren’t necessarily evil as cultural celebrations, but they aren’t part of the gospel, either. So I can tell you the coming Sunday is “Easter Sunday” and “Resurrection Sunday” but they aren’t the same thing; they just fall on the same day. And I’ve probably already blathered aplenty about how those relate to Passover, so let’s keep the focus where it belongs.

First Century Christians did not, so far as we can find, celebrate any other significant days in the life of Christ except the annual ritual for His Passion and Resurrection. The Passion was made into a non-seasonal celebration in the Lord’s Supper, so that leaves only the single significant calendar date of the Resurrection. Even that seems to have been modified somewhat if you accept the idea of moving from Sabbath to Sunday worship. I find it obvious at least some portion of the First Century churches did so, finer points of theology notwithstanding. Further, they did so under the approval, if not direct leadership, of the Apostles.

If it becomes an argument, you don’t understand anything that matters.