Each year since 1927, TIME Magazine has selected an official Person of the Year, distinguishing an individual who “has done the most to influence the events of the year.”
According to Steven Skiena and Charles B. Ward, authors of Who’s Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank, Cambridge University Press, 2013, Albert Einstein–the underestimated genius whose family maid nicknamed him “the dopey one” … and was apparently culpable for his iconic “hairdo”– was the most significant modern individual never selected for the annual honor, though TIME did name him Person of the Century in 1999.
Skiena and Ward claim, “Historically significant figures leave statistical evidence of their presence behind.”
Many of these individuals are philosophers, major religious figures, political leaders, scientists/ inventors, or giants in literature and music. Given the realities of time, however, umpteen of these somebodies from the past have faded from living memory. As noted Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot put it, “Many are the dead men too silent to be real.”
“Many world leaders have left their marks on the pages of history. Religious gurus have helped shape culture and thought. But regardless of what they taught, accomplished, or believed,” writes a contributor to GotQuestions.org, “they all have one thing in common—they are all dead. There was a point at which each mystic, emperor, and philosopher came into being and another point at which they exited this world. We can visit their gravesites or memorials, and beneath the ground their corpses or bone fragments are still there. Every leader, prophet, or king has died or will die, and, once they die, that’s it.”
Their voice becomes silent “too silent” in many cases “to be real.”
Except for Jesus!
Jesus set himself apart from every other religious leader by the simple fact that there is no grave with his name on it. He was, after all, buried in a borrowed tomb; he knew he would not be needing it for long.
Things would have settled down if Jesus had stayed in the tomb. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, he would have been no different from any other zealous reformer.
In truth, as author Eugene Peterson paraphrases the Apostle Paul’s words to the church in Corinth, “Now, let me ask you something profound yet troubling. If you became believers because you trusted the proclamation that Christ is alive, risen from the dead, how can you let people say that there is no such thing as a resurrection? If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it—if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ—sheer fabrications, if there’s no resurrection.
“If corpses can’t be raised, then Christ wasn’t, because he was indeed dead. And if Christ weren’t raised, then all you’re doing is wandering about in the dark, as lost as ever. It’s even worse for those who died hoping in Christ and resurrection, because they’re already in their graves. If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot. But the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.”
Indian-born American author Deepak Chopra proclaimed, “Resurrection is a leap into a whole new way of thinking.” A glaring contrast, I might add, to multitudes of pagan myths and godless ideologies that humankind has dabbled in throughout history.
Consider the reality that all through history, religious leaders come and go, but God is very much alive. The Christian faith rises or falls on that claim.
In the first part of the 20th century, a substantial number of scholarly works appeared drawing attention to pagan and gnostic myths. Was Jesus just “another” dying and rising God myth that happens to have hung on?
Sir George Frazer, considered one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology, perpetuated this idea, contending that the New Testament writers were simply reproducing myth, which was part of the “intellectual furniture of the ancient world.” It’s apparent our present world is filled to the rafters with “intellectual furniture.”
The wisdom of C. S. Lewis, on the other hand, who actually knew something about myths and was a contemporary of Frazer, scrutinized that the New Testament accounts of the resurrection of Jesus bore no relation to mythology, despite the claims of academics such as Frazer.
The sheer provisional nature of scholarship seems to have been ignored. The fate of the resurrection myth is a case in point: in 1920, it was treated virtually as an established fact of serious and responsible scholarship; eighty years later, it is regarded as an interesting, if now discredited, idea.
Anyone who works in the field of the history of ideas knows, it is remarkable how rapidly the assured presuppositions of one generation are abandoned by another. It originates from an elevated opinion of one’s self which inescapably leads to a diminished view of God.
Jesus’s resurrection remains God’s reverberating shout to a world awaiting hope. Easter refuses to allow the short-term preoccupations of modernity to dictate its character for future generations.
It is for this reason there will never be a day in human history where Jesus is forgotten…too silent to be real.
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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