Even though I no longer am involved in the ordained ministry, Catholic or Protestant, and therefore am not privileged to write a religious column in the News-Herald, I nevertheless cannot help wishing to be a “voice in the wilderness” and express some additional views on the significance of Passover/Easter. While both Passover and Easter are commemorations of events in our human history allegedly attributed to divine intervention and therefore celebrated as days of religious festivity, I think we miss part of the history of these events.
In spite of all the pious talk about Passover being a celebration of liberation, we should not forget that the word Passover refers to the Hebrew god Yahweh’s “passing over” the Israelite homes in order to confer his tenth promised plague upon the Egyptians.
By “passing over” the Israelite homes Yahweh would save them from the mass slaughter he was about to commit on all the firstborn in Egypt, both of men and beasts. I cannot help pondering on what the parents of all these murdered innocents were thinking. And why kill all the firstborn animals? How cruel it was (or is) for a god to commit such atrocities in order to further peoples’ faith and trust in him!
Easter is of course the celebration of the cruel death of an innocent man, again perpetrated by a god, in order to satisfy him for all the atrocities we humans have committed against him. It becomes even more cruel when we believe that it was Yahweh’s own son who was executed!
It is sure enough that Jesus is said to have risen from the dead and therefore celebrated as a victor over death, but why is it that divine (and human) history must repeat itself and celebrate the victory of liberation only as a consequence of bloody murder of the innocent?
Jake Hjorth
Grand Marais
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