For many people the resurrection is a metaphor, the faith equivalent of the Phoenix-myth: Deaths aren’t final and we can, if we do it right, rise from our own ashes.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
THE RESURRECTION – THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING OR THE POWER OF GOD?
What gives us the power to rise from our own ashes? In one view, proper will power and positive thinking. The idea is that if you think positively, or believe strongly, or persevere long enough good things will happen to you. Faith, hope, and positive thinking make good things happen and resurrect life from its many deaths.
This is the basis for many self-help philosophies and a lot of religious groups. They base themselves more on the power of the human spirit than on the power of transcendent grace. For them, the resurrection is the Phoenix-myth, upgraded a bit by psychological and religious language.
There is some depth and truth in this. Among other things, the resurrection is about positive thinking and the belief that positive energy makes good things happen, just as self-defeating thoughts are also self-fulfilling. Positive thinking creates positive energy and that energy can help bring life out of ashes. This is true even physically. Sometimes in a serious illness the right attitude is just as important for a cure as the right medication. This is not just wishful thinking; proper attitude lets the right physical, emotional, and spiritual energy flow into the world and into the body.
For many people, this is what the resurrection means, it is a metaphor for the transformation that positive energy can bring into this world.
But it is more than that. The resurrection is not just about the potential effect of positive human energy within us. It is about the power of God, miraculous energy, energy that can do for us what we can’t do for ourselves, energy that can do for us what nature, all on its own, can’t, The resurrection is about power entering our world and our lives from beyond.
The resurrection has a place for positive thinking and emphasizes the importance of appropriate will power. But it’s much more than that. Ultimately, it is about the transcendent power of God breaking into nature and into our lives and doing for us what we can’t do simply through will power and positive thinking. It is a power that can re-arrange the very atoms inside of our physical bodies, our aching emotions, and our divided world and raise new life up from the ashes