12 min 29 sec: app reading time

Sabbath, April 19, 2025

Dear Friend:

As I walked out of religion almost 20 years ago, deconstructed Christian theology at a time when the lingo of "deconstruction" was not common, and walked into the wilderness of God's presence, many things changed.

The meaning of "Passover" and "Easter" was one of the foundational views that transformed my journey with Go,d and I read the Biblical narrative with different eyes.

There is a close connection between Passover and Easter.

PASSOVER

Passover, also known as "Pesach," is a Jewish festival that has been celebrated since at least the 5th century BCE.

It commemorates the Israelites' exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt, as told in the Book of Exodus. The festival is traditionally associated with Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt.

The story of Passover is told in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 12-TM), detailing the Israelites' enslavement in Egypt and their eventual liberation.

"Passover" celebrates God's "passing over" the houses of the Israelites, sparing their firstborn during the tenth plague, while the firstborn of the Egyptians was killed.

Yet, a shallow reading of the narrative describes an authoritarian God revealing power capriciously. How would you feel if you were a Jew and your neighbor was an Egyptian? Your firstborn was spared, and your neighbor was not? I will not address this question in this "Chats" except to touch it marginally because it deals with the mystery of God's love and justice.

The Israelites celebrated "Passover" after the Ten Plagues. The tenth plague was the death of the firstborn of Egyptians, while the Israelites, marked with lamb's blood, were spared.

The meaning of "Pass-over" is profoundly paradoxical as well as epistemologically significant in catching glimpses of the nature of God. The death of the innocent sacrificial lamb, which in turn spared the death of the firstborn, pointed to God's innocent suffering witnessing the people of Israel in Egyptian captivity for 430 years.

God wanted Israel to catch God's a glimpse of "innocent suffering" in connection to their suffering in the symbol of the innocent lamb offered as a sacrifice.

My presupposition is that they didn't, and instead, they saw the death of the innocent lamb as a "transactional" event that benefitted them as chosen by God as opposed to the Egyptians. I don't see this interpretation as accurate.

The metanarrative we miss in interpreting the death of the innocent lamb is that God's innocent suffering for both the Israelites and the Egyptians had been settled by Egypt's cultural decision to reject God's presence to deliver Israel. God respected their collective choice. Israel was the oppressed community that chose to accept God's intervention on their behalf. (Case in point: Jonah's anti-loving attitude towards Ninivites and God's love for them reveals the opposite)

When we catch the death of the innocent lamb in Passover away from a transactional, preferential, capricious, authoritarian, punishing, self-serving, exclusive Jewish event by God, we see the metanarrative of God's innocent suffering for the entire human condition (Jewish and Egyptians) and its choices.

Would an Egyptian firstborn be spared death if an Egyptian family had used the blood from the death of an innocent lamb to signify loyalty to God? I think so! We have no record of it. Was the ritual kept secret from the Egyptians to benefit the Israelites and punish the Egyptians? We don't know. I doubt it.

I need you to get the context of the narrative as recorded in Exodus. 

Modern scholars attribute the "editing" of the Book of Exodus to an anonymous writer ca. 500 BCE, most likely during the Babylonian exile as they revisited their national identity in an attempt to make Israel great again. We don't have all the details on how Passover happened, perhaps 4,000 years earlier, because the "editing" was meant to compare Egypt with Babylon as the "villains" of the story and Israel as God's chosen people and the victims. There was a biased agenda behind the narrative.

I affirm that the interpretation of the "Pass-over" as a glimpse of God's exclusive view of Israel and seeming cruelty against Egyptians misses the bigger picture. The metanarrative does not deal with "exclusive" choices by a capricious, authoritarian God but a "collective" choice executed by the leadership of those communities as much as Jonah and Nineveh's narrative.

This is a critical theology of God, in my view.

EASTER

Every Christian has heard plenty of reflections on the theme of Easter events, but has Easter really been considered a paradox that points to the meaning of the ancient Passover?

"Christians" are quick to point to the "sacrificial lamb" of the Old Testament as Jesus's death on the cross as "the lamb of the world" (John 1:29-TM). What follows is Jesus's substitutionary (transactional) death on the cross for the sins of people who are not responsible for their sinful condition. The whole scheme doesn't make sense.

I dissociated from such notions years ago while entertaining what I consider to be a much more profound, more cohesive understanding that Passover and Easter are both linked to "innocent suffering."

This understanding drove me to develop a "Relational Evolutionary Wholeness" theology of God, which serves as a landscape for catching glimpses of God's character, humanity, and the entire cosmos. There is no capricious God punishing anyone, manifesting wrath, or vicariously serving Jesus to die for me. LOVE is the all-encompassing "Relational Evilutionary Wholeness" that allows me to embrace paradoxes, ambivalence, seeming contradictions, and mysteries as one.

I get that viewing God "suffering innocently" is paradoxical and radical, yet that's what makes "Immanuel" ("God with us," Matthew 1:23-TM), the incarnation of God in human body, so relevant if we are to consider a non-dualistic view of "divine wholeness" that includes God, humanity, and the cosmos. 

I propose that "innocent suffering" is the most radical RESISTANCE movement from God driven by LOVE. It both respects choices and evolves into wholeness relationally as designed!

I fear that the notion that the cross symbolizes our personal suffering is one reason why the compelling message of Passover and Easter as a "paradox" is lost in the noise of religious anachronistic analogies.

With all due respect, the "resurrection" most Christians celebrate at Easter is not a big deal in the metanarrative of God's activity in the universe. Death and life are not earthshaking events, as we see several times during Jesus' ministry in Palestine. Jesus' cruel execution on Friday did not send him to spend Sabbath in hell. Life, which is eternal as God as is, was on! Jesus "slept" on Sabbath and woke up on Sunday!

My point is that when Passover and Easter become "theologically transactional," the paradox of God's and humanity's innocent suffering is lost in the metaphor of the "sacrificial lamb," which may not have been God's intended purpose for ancient Israel's experience with Egypt (Passover) or for Christians today (Easter).

The transactional, vicarious, and substitutionary view of the "sacrifical lamb" robs us of something much more profound. Instead, it gives us a glimpse of innocent suffering experienced by God, humans, creation on planet Earth, and God's enemies. The entire creation aches! (Romans 8:18-22-TM) Further, God experiences "innocent suffering" with us! (Hebrew 4:15-16-TM)

When we consider the paradox of Easter as a window into "innocent suffering" that respects "choice" because that's what love is all about, you suddenly shift from a "victory-deliverance-salvation" mindset to what bonds God and creation in love. (Respect for the creature's choice).

The "victory" mindset is so embedded in the Christian psyche that failure is seen as defeat, and brokenness is abnormal. In reality, "choice" has consequences, and it's an essential agency of existential love. To love is to sign a pact with innocent suffering, whether responsible for wrong choices or not. God is on the spot and suffers innocently because choice demands it. So are humans and the entire creation.

Humanity sees "weakness" in the background of illusionary power and omnipotence. Yet, I have affirmed for years that "power" and "omnipotence," when applied to God's character, do not serve our comprehension of God's "wholeness" as love and love alone! If justice can not be framed by love, it's not divine justice. If vindication of a perpetrator or victim can't be framed by love, then all you have left is unchecked corruption or punishment, retribution, and vengeance.

I want you to catch this!

God sees you and me as God experiences divinity. In "wholeness" and love, God doesn't exercise power or omnipotence, even when wrong choices result in consequences. Instead, God exists in incompleteness and "innocent suffering" with the creature, whether guilty or not. God continues to relational evolve into wholeness WITH creation!

In other words, God doesn't fit the framework of power, omnipotence, weakness, and perfection as we define those terms.

Yes, the tune of Western Christian religion, to which we are accustomed, has wired us to project onto God the way we deal with our culture and morals as humans.

It is not by chance that some of the most notorious thinkers—whom we might term "theologians of paradox"—such as Paul, Augustine, Pascal, or Kierkegaard—all lived at crucial moments in the history of suffering when it was innocently experienced by the masses. Through their interpretations, they were able to point to a God on a journey with the suffering people.

I realize that most Pastors and Christians have all these "paradoxes" figured out, and they preach them as certainty while forgetting that they were born as mysterious, at times dark paradoxes of ambivalence, mystic glimpses, and even contradictory statements that were never meant to be cemented as signs of defining certainty.

I get it that we feel good with the certainty of polarities: death and life, light and darkness, salvation and sin. In reality, such polarities are non-existent. Thus, all we have is "Relational Evolutionary Wholeness," which embraces perfect imperfection, life, and "sleep," light and darkness as the absence of light, and salvation as healing on a journey.

Paul, at the moment when the early followers of the Messiah parted ways with Judaism before they were labeled as Christians, faced the paradox of an unknown God. We have no clue how radical circumcision was for the Jewish community when Paul declared that God loved all the same, Jewish and non-Jewish people. The polarity of the "saved-chosen" and the "non-saved-non-chosen" evaporated! That was revolutionary because it was paradoxical! It was theologically repulsive to the Conservative religious community.

Augustine amid the turbulence after the fall of Rome; Pascal in the upheavals that gave rise to the modern world; and Kierkegaard when this world of mass civic Christianity of modern times was finally beginning to fall apart.

PRESENT PARADOX OF EASTER

At present, we are witnessing the withering away of a type of Western Christian religion that came into existence during the Enlightenment, partly under its influence and partly in reaction to it. My denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Christian, is struggling to find its identity in the midst of decaying Christian apologetics. Much of it is irrelevant!

It is withering away with its own epoch.

As on many occasions in history, this moment of faith can be interpreted "optimistically" (it will get better as an institutional delusion), "catastrophically" (the loss of certainty, deconstruction, walking away from religion altogether and considering it myth at best) or as an "awakening" to a non-denominational, non-institutional movement of love and wholeness that we have not seen before.

Many religious leaders propose a return to pre-modern Christianity or a shallow "modernized form of progressive Christianity." I am not in this camp.

God has revealed throughout history that "movements" are fresh and, at times, reveal paradoxical, ambivalent views that can be held as parts of wholeness while not catching all its implications. I grew up in a Christian religious denomination that thrives on certainty.

Easter, I propose, offers us a golden opportunity to catch a glimpse of a non-Christian paradox (a non-transactional view of God's love) and a notch to deal with the present conditions of the culture and the global village across all religions and political views.

TWO READINGS OF THE EASTER NARRATIVE

It can be read as a drama in two acts (in the first act, a just and innocent man is sentenced to death and executed, and then, in the second act, he is resurrected and accepted by God). This is perhaps the classical Christian view that introduces a theology of salvation and atonement and connects Passover with Easter with an eye to the doctrine of salvation.

The Easter story can also be read as a drama in one act (in which both versions of the story take place at the same time), the one-act being "innocent suffering."

In the first interpretation, the "resurrection" is the happy ending, and the entire story is a typical myth or optimistic fairy tale.

It's the second interpretation that actually gets me and penetrates the depth of it with authentic implications regarding God's love. It can create a profound faith, which is the opposite of theological certainty, yet overflowing you with inner liberation.

"Faith" in this context actually takes the events of Passover and Easter as paradoxical glimpses of the God who suffers innocently with creation. There is no "happy outcome" on Sunday, as the first view describes. Death and life are two sides of existence, and God is not exempt from such experience. Thus, the "death of God" is perhaps too strong an argument to sustain for many Christians, but it's not an anomaly in my theology of God.

Accepting Easter as paradox invites you to enter into the story and, in the light of it, to understand and live one's life afresh, to be capable of bearing its perplexities, and not to fear uncertainty but to walk into it boldly.

The second interpretation of the Easter story does not involve optimism but a negative view of it. This matters to me because I adhere to negative psychoanalysis in dealing with the existential human condition, which says that there is no "light at the end of the tunnel" or "light outside of self to guide me" but "I am the light in the darkness" in the inner chambers of my consciousness. After all, God navigates darkness with me without the illusion of external light.

The paradox of Easter has intrigued me for years because I don't see it as a two-drama event, such as death on Friday and a happy outcome on Sunday. Between Friday and Sunday, the Sabbath invites me to rest and trust the journey!

The cross and the ancient altar meet at the same point. The sacrificial lamb and Jesus's execution emphasize the same aspect: innocent suffering.

One of the great theologians of the twentieth century, J.B. Metz (Germany, 1928-2019), emphasized that when we proclaim the message of Resurrection, "we must not silence the cry of the Crucified" - otherwise, instead of a Christian theology of Resurrection, we offer a shallow "myth of victory."

Easter is not intended to make light of the tragic aspects of human life; it does not enable us to avoid the burden of mystery, paradox, and ambivalence (including the mystery of suffering and death) or not to take seriously those who wrestle strenuously with hope, who "bear the burden and the heat of the day" of our world's external and internal deserts.

Easter is not an escapist mechanism but a call to resilient trust in God, knowing that innocent suffering is part of the relational evolutionary journey into wholeness and that God is right next to us.

A failure to comprehend the paradoxical nature of God's presence in the world leads either to inane scientific atheism (proving that all of it "isn't true") or to the no-less-inane religious apologetics (rational and unconflictual) that it is all true, without either of them asking questions about how things are or are not existentially consistent with the wholeness of God and what is the nature of such wholeness? Is God compartamentalized? Does God suffer innocently like I do? Does God die and live like I do? That question can only be answered paradoxically by a journey of relational evolutionary wholeness at a cosmic level.

HOW TO LIVE IN THE PARADOX OF EASTER?

My journey with God has taught me to differentiate between certainty and uncertainty. Certainty is what the Christian religion offered me for half of my life, while uncertainty is the paradox of faith I journey now.

Uncertainty in dark times can only be embraced through mindfulness, reflection, and letting go of attachment to what provides certainty. Thus, the paradox of what is and what is not. Whom you trust, and you can not touch. What you affirm yet are not able to explain it. What seems to be true now changes the next moment. Relational Evolutionary Wholeness has resolved most of my angst regarding theological issues and the paradoxes I encounter regarding God and life. My relationship with God is my inner experience in consciousness, constantly evolving into wholeness, which is an eternal path.

I have grown to respect people of different paths of life and religion. Many who do not espouse faith sometimes display implicit values that are fundamental to an attitude of relational experience with God in their behavior.

I don't mean to belittle in any way the formal aspects of explicit Christianity, but call your attention to what breathes outside religion.

We should eschew the black-and-white vision and the simplistic drawing of boundaries for certainty.

BE AN AGENT OF THE EASTER PARADOX NOW!

Authentic faith away from certainty is open to the unmanipulated mystery and paradox of life and God's grace.

The God to whom I refer—the God imperfectly described by the Biblical writers and the God of my experience—is not a "supernatural being" somewhere in the wings of the visible world but a mystery that is the depths and foundation of all reality. It's a paradox to journey into and throughout eternity.

God's presence now consists of much more than what rightly appears to human intellect, human imagination, and everyday experience as impossible and unimaginable.

Grasping the paradox of Easter can offer you the experience of the new movement God is preparing around the world right now.

Innocent suffering is a path, not a sign of defeat or failure. It's resistance at its best, not a passive acceptance of what seems hopeless. God and humanity are on it. You are not alone. "Hope against all hope," (Romans 4:18-NIV) says Paul in one of his many paradoxical statements, means exactly a journey in the midst of darkness.

Jesus said that what is impossible for humans (navigating in darkness) is possible when you journey with God beside you in the darkness. (Luke 18:27-TM)

With you on your journey,

Pastor Harold