The White House became embroiled in controversy over the weekend after issuing a “Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024” for Easter Sunday.

Rev. Greg Laurie called the proclamation “a profound insult to the sincerely held religious beliefs of millions of Americans on our holiest day” and added, “It’s time to turn back to God, not turn our backs on God.” Others joined in criticizing the proclamation as assaulting the Christian faith. Proponents noted that the event falls on March 31 every year and only coincidentally aligned with Easter this year.

If the event had been rescheduled so as not to conflict with Easter, criticism would have risen in precisely the opposite direction: proponents would have supported the move while critics would have labeled it discriminatory and likely blamed Christians for being “transphobic.”

This controversy is nothing new: Easter has been dividing skeptics and believers since Jesus rose from the dead. The authorities who arranged Jesus’ crucifixion, when told by the guard of his resurrection, bribed them to lie (Matthew 28:11–15) and continued to persecute his followers (cf. Acts 5:40). While billions of Christians claimed yesterday that Jesus is “risen indeed,” billions more rejected or ignored our claim.

How can we persuade Americans not to “turn our backs on God” but to “turn back to God”?

Monday can be our most persuasive evidence for Sunday.

Would you die for a lie?

The historical evidence for the resurrection is remarkably strong (see my article, “Why Jesus?” for an extensive overview). For example, we know from ancient non-biblical records that:

• Jesus of Nazareth was a real person of history.
• He was crucified by Pontius Pilate.
• His first followers believed he was raised from the dead.
• They worshiped him as God.

We can also point to the empirical evidence of the empty tomb. No other explanation makes sense:

• If the disciples stole the body, how did they overpower the Roman guards, convince five hundred people that he was alive (1 Corinthians 15:6), make his body appear through locked doors (John 20:19) and cook a meal for the disciples (John 21:9–12), then cause his body to ascend to heaven (Acts 1:9)? Would they then all die for a lie, some in gruesome ways? Would you?
• If the authorities stole the body, wouldn’t they produce it when the disciples began preaching the resurrection?
• If the women went to the wrong tomb, wouldn’t the authorities and Joseph of Arimathea, who owned the correct tomb, correct the error?
• If Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, how did he survive a spear thrust that ruptured the pericardial sac of his heart (John 19:34) and an airtight mummified shroud, overpower the guards in his emaciated condition, make his way through locked doors, and then perform the greatest high jump in history at the ascension?

Of course, a postmodern relativist is likely to dismiss all of this with the rejoinder, “that’s just your truth.” We are objectivists with nearly every dimension of reality, from the laws of physics to laws against murder, theft, and the like. But when we confront reality that clashes with our preferences, we retreat to the shelter of subjectivism, claiming that “all truth is relative” (which is an objective truth claim).

The most compelling argument for Easter

You and I can choose today to become evidence for the most compelling argument for Easter in our relativistic culture: the changed lives of Jesus’ followers.

The apostles are our example. Men who abandoned Jesus when he was arrested, denied him when he was on trial, forsook him when he was dying on the cross, and then hid from the authorities behind locked doors soon became catalysts for the mightiest spiritual movement in human history.

Peter is Exhibit A. After boasting that he would never deny his Lord, he denied even knowing him three times. Even after he saw the empty tomb, he returned to his fishing profession (John 21:3). (Note that he went fishing at night, which was what professional rather than recreational fishermen did so they could sell their catch as “fresh” the next morning; cf. Luke 5:5.)

But when he met the risen Lord, he left his fishing nets behind to “fish for men” (Matthew 4:19). The other apostles joined him, spreading out across the Roman Empire to share the good news of Easter at the eventual cost of their lives. There is no other reasonable explanation for their transformed lives except that they met the risen Christ and were never the same again.

“From this, everything begins anew!”

So it can be with you and me. What we do today can show that what we celebrated yesterday is true. When others see the difference Christ makes in our lives, they will be drawn to seek that difference for their lives.

In his Easter message yesterday, Pope Francis proclaimed:

“The tomb of Jesus is open and it is empty! From this, everything begins anew!”

He noted that without the forgiveness of sins, there is no way to overcome the barriers of prejudice, mutual recrimination, and other conflicts that beset our broken world: “Only the risen Christ, by granting us the forgiveness of our sins, opens the way for a renewed world.”

This is “the path that none of us, but God alone, could open,” he stated.

If you and I truly walk this path with the risen Christ today, our world cannot be the same tomorrow.

Monday news to know:

• King Charles shakes hands, chats with crowd at most significant public outing since cancer diagnosis
• Crews carefully start removing the first piece of twisted steel from collapsed Baltimore bridge
• Gunman kills 1, injures 4 at Nashville coffee shop on Easter Sunday
• Seven kids, some as young as 12, wounded in mass shooting at busy Indianapolis mall
• On this day in 1789: First US House of Representatives elects speaker

Quote for the day:

“Fulfillment comes when we live our lives on purpose.” —Simon Sinak

Denison Forum

The 2024 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments kick off today, so if your office seems a bit more sparsely populated or email responses come slower than usual, now you know why. And the lengths to which some will go in order to watch the tournament’s opening days of chaos speak volumes to the place it has within our cultural psyche:

• A reported 37 percent of Americans are willing to call in sick or skip work to watch March Madness.
• One in five have canceled dates or birthday parties in order to catch the games.
• Those not willing to skip work will watch an average of six hours of tournament play while on the clock (and that was the estimate before working from home became more common).
• For men not willing to fake an injury or illness, March Madness is the most popular time of the year to get a vasectomy and have a legitimate reason not to leave the couch.

One of the primary reasons for the tournament’s popularity—especially its opening days—is the fact that it truly feels like anything can happen in most of these games.

As I wrote last year,

Upsets are common and, unless they happen to your school, we get to embrace the seeming randomness of each game’s outcome without being personally invested in the results. We can root for the underdogs without any sense of disappointment when they lose. There aren’t many other areas of our lives where we can emotionally invest in something without any real risk if it doesn’t go our way.

And considering the ways in which the sport has fundamentally changed over the last few years, this season’s tournament could be as unpredictable as any before it.

NIL money, transfer portals, and the chance to choose

As Billy Witz notes,

Three years ago, under mounting legislative and judicial pressure, the N.C.A.A. changed two major rules. It allowed athletes to make money from so-called name, image and likeness payments, and it eased restrictions on players transferring from one school to another. Those changes — prompted in part by a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the N.C.A.A.’s authority — have upended the top levels of college sports.

As a result, previously unseen levels of parity exist in a sport that used to be dominated by the blue-blood programs that routinely recruited the nation’s best prospects. Now—for better or worse—those players often go to the programs where they can get the most playing time while padding both their résumé and their bank accounts in the process.

While it would be naïve to assume that paying players is new to the sport, the ability to do so in the open has changed the way many of these young men and women have come to view their time in college. And given how much can ride on finding the right fit and opportunity, many of them are better off for it.

Consider this: Of Krysten Peek’s eight players who could help themselves the most in this year’s tournament, five of them started their college careers playing somewhere else. And before the tournament even started, a little more than 10 percent of players on the men’s side of Division I entered the transfer portal with the hopes of finding a better situation for next season.

For some, it will work out well. For others, it will not, with some losing the scholarship they had in the failed pursuit of a better opportunity.

Either way, though, most players seem to relish the chance to make that choice for themselves. And there is an important lesson in that reality for us today.

The consequences of free will

One of the fundamental truths of what it means to be created in the image of God is that we possess the freedom to choose how we will use the life he’s given us.

Now, that doesn’t mean we can do anything, as all free will exists more as a menu of options than the absence of limitations. But our heavenly Father created us to go through life with the ability to decide how we will approach it.

Ideally, we would use that freedom to choose to love and obey him. That is far and away the best approach, and Scripture makes that abundantly clear across its pages. But Scripture is also clear that the gift of freedom requires us to own the results of our decisions (Galatians 6:7–8).

We don’t get to make a choice and blame God or anyone else for how it turns out.

Ultimately, those consequences belong to us, and it’s a sign of maturity—both emotional and spiritual—to be able to accept those consequences and move forward. That doesn’t mean we have to like the results. But whether it’s a busted bracket or something of far greater consequence, when we choose to live in the past, we greatly reduce what the Lord can do through us in the present.

So choose instead to learn from your experiences, then move on to wherever God leads next. That’s how we grow, both as people and in our walk with the Lord.

Where do you need to experience that kind of growth today?

Denison Forum