Good Friday

Cosmic Personalism At Work

Many people in the West have adopted what we may call the Buddhist view of the death of Christ.  The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth has meaning, even great significance, in the Buddhist world-view.  For the Buddhist, life is pain and suffering.  The goal is to escape existence and achieve nothingness.  For the Buddhist, the Cross of Christ signifies the essence of life, which is suffering.

 This view of life equates roughly to the materialist, secularist view, prominent in the West.  Existence and self-consciousness is a random consequence of the collision of sub-atomic particles.  The great goal--the only true goal of this life--is to escape the existence of self-conscious being which is a mirage and reach the state of impersonal non-being which is the truth and the future of all.

Both the Buddhist and the Western materialist have the same view of Jesus dying at Calvary.  The Cross witnesses to the vale of tears that is existence in this life.  It supposedly makes humans long for the state of nothingness when all consciousness will cease and personhood will dissipate like a cloud of vapour.  Both the Buddhist and the Western materialist recognise the Cross as a siren call teaching us to yearn for our future of non being and nothingness.

The Christian doctrine of Jesus on Calvary's cross could not be more diametrically opposed to these interpretations.
 The death of Christ does not beckon us to non-being and nothingness, but to eternal life and our reconciliation to an infinite personal Being, against whom all men have sinned and rebelled.  We have violated His law, rejected His rule, and, like the petty rebels we are, sought to live as our own gods.  The end result of such hubris and rebellion is a meaningless devotion to nothingness, which has become the dominant hope of the Eastern Buddhist and the Western materialist.

Christians believe in cosmic personalism, not impersonal nothingness.  Our rebellion against God is personal.  It brings true, eternal guilt--for all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  But in denying the existence of the eternal, creator God, the Buddhist and the Western materialist have been driven to the only possible alternative hypothesis: the essence of being becomes non-being. The essence of meaning is no meaning.  The hope and goal of our existence is to have no hope and no consciousness.  The goal of all life is death.

In stark contrast, the death of Christ is an affirmation of being and life and personhood.  Christ died, bearing the guilt and punishment of our rebellion against God.  He has satisfied the personal guilt of all His people by His personal sacrifice and the personal transaction between His heavenly Father and Himself and us.  As such, the penalty for our sin, death-in-Hell, could not hold Him.  His sinless perfection demanded--required--His resurrection.  Why "demand"?  Because of the infinitely personal nature of God and because of the abiding eternal human personhood of Christ. The Father could not deny the perfection of His Son, nor the sinlessness of Christ's human nature, nor the eternal glory they demanded.

Is it any wonder that Christians glory in the Cross of Christ?

In the cross, in the cross,
be my glory ever,
till my raptured soul shall find
rest beyond the river. 

We Christians turn away from the impersonal, cosmic nothingness of eastern Buddhism and western materialism.   We celebrate personal eternal life, personal eternal being, personal eternal service, and personal eternal friendship with Christ our only Saviour.  For us Christians, this is the significance of the Cross, the significance of Good Friday.