Good Friday.

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This is Good Friday.   Today two thousand years ago a man was scourged on the back until the blood hid his skin, thorns were hammered into his head, he was given a heavy piece of timber to carry though weak and exhausted, and finally nailed on a Cross where he hung for three hours until he eventually died.   There was nothing really good about that.   Yet for two thousand years the man has been praised and honoured as a King, and even called the Son of God.   Little wonder some people laugh at Christians.    But the story is true.  Jesus lived and Jesus died.   

It can be very hard at times to understand why this happened.   OK, we are born into this world and some of us grow up happy and contented while others live their lives in great troubles and misery.    We look at the world and call for justice, we believe that everyone has a right to happiness, and we make up our own minds as to how this can be achieved.  We proudly start dictating to others that our way is the best way, and we are the only ones with the answer, and anyone who disagrees with us is the enemy.   That is certainly the story of the world over the past two hundred years and it has brought us to a point where truth is lies, where lies are truth, and the only answer is to put others in their place under a strong dictatorship, for the not so educated are foolish people, and for their good we must assert ourselves. 

But what does this man on the cross have to do with anything?   He is something of folklore, a myth thought up by people who are foolish enough to believe in God rather than Science.   Some of us will know of the Turin Shroud and how when it came to Britain, the men of Science claimed that it was a fake.    How could it be for these men had held it in their hands?    As scientists they were not asked to prove the figure on the cloth was Jesus Christ.     They were asked to explain how the image got on the cloth when there was no evidence that paint, chalk, or any known material had been used in its production.    They were also asked how someone who lived before the 19th century and photography had produced a negative image.    They completely avoided these points stating that "the image is a 14th century fraud" indicating that it could not have been Jesus Christ.    But nobody had asked them to prove it was Jesus Christ.    At a scientific level the image could have been anyone, there was only the circumstantial evidence of the Gospels that made Christians say it was Jesus, not science.   But the fraud was theirs, for when it came back to the honest scientists who had asked the questions about how it was produced and how a negative image was painted in the 14th century, it was found the British Scientists had deliberately cut a small sample they analysed from a part of the shroud that had been repaired after a fire in the 14th century, so their carbon dating was deliberately flawed.    Jesus Christ or not Jesus Christ the Shroud remains a challenge to honest scientists.

So where am I going with my narrative.   The belief that there is no God is so intense in  some that it is almost an obsession.     Not believing in God is now the sign of intelligence.   Yes, belief in God does lower our self image and reduce us to dependents rather than masters.   But this God was the one who was crucified.  He suffered as his creatures suffered to show that he loved them, and help them see that there is a goodness in our nature which can help us make this world a better place, but then we must sacrifice our own ambitions and follow the way he has marked out for us.   Now there is a real challenge.