Rowan Williams: Arising from the dead?

The Archbishop of Canterbury stated today that the fundamental message of Christianity this Easter was that Jesus arose from the dead.

As somebody who grew up in the Catholic tradition and most importantly as somebody who grew up in the Christian tradition, I say that the most important message of Christianity is not that Jesus arose from the dead.

The most important message of Christianity is that Jesus was ready and willing to give his life for the common good. The meaning of Resurrection is that all of us can have the hope of starting afresh thanks to somebody like Jesus that gave his life for us.

When asked to tell to whom a Roman coin belonged to, Jesus states: Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar and Give God what belongs to God. This is a message that organized churches across the world seem to have completely forgotten in their quest to please political correctness.

But there is another message Jesus sends to whoever wants to listen to him. When asked why he was preaching outside the temple, Jesus replied that he preached everywhere because God is everywhere. Jesus was not talking about organized and politicized churches but about the essence of Christianity that is to spread the word of God everywhere and transmit the word of God to whoever is ready and willing to listen to it.

And there is yet another message Jesus sends to whoever is listening to him: you can choose. So the word of God is not be imposed or forced upon other people. It is up to us to choose or not to choose. This is why Christianity is so fundamental for us. We have a choice and having choices is the foundation of tolerance in society.

Modern Democracy is very much based on this fundamental principle that states that we must have choices and when organized churches become an obstacle that limits democratic choices they are basically attacking Christianity and eroding Democracy.