(I had originally written this back in 2007 or so, but I like to re-post it from time to time)
I try to share this every Saturday before Easter/Resurrection Day. It is part of a blog entry I wrote years ago and I've shared it a few times on Facebook.
Some years back I read a book called "The Idiot" (by Fyodor Dostoevsky) and no book, outside of the Bible, has impacted my life and no other novels of literature have compared to that novel (in my opinion).
The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky while living in Bern, Germany came upon the panting (see below) and was mesmerized. Dostoevsky saw what the painting depicted as the pivot on which faith or unbelief must rest. One must either believe that God raised Jesus’s body from the dead, and there is, therefore, hope for humanity beyond this life, OR accept that such an event never occurred, and because contrary to the laws of nature, never could occur, and that we are thus trapped in a mechanized universe in which the dead stay dead. Dostoevsky included the painting in a scene of his novel, The Idiot.
(Painting is, "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb" by Hans Holbein the Younger ).
Doestoevsky using the painting in his book, "The Idiot" a character named Ippolit states upon seeing the paiting:
"Looking at that picture, you get the impression of nature as some enormous, implacable, and dumb beast, or, to put it more correctly, much more correctly, though it may seem strange, as some huge engine of the latest design, which has senselessly seized, cut to pieces, and swallowed up–impassively and unfeelingly–a great and priceless Being, a Being worth the whole of nature and all its laws, worth the entire earth, which was perhaps created solely for the coming of that Being! The picture seems to give expression to the idea of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subordinated, and this idea is suggested to you unconsciously. The people surrounding the dead man, none of whom is shown in the picture, must have been overwhelmed by a feeling of terrible anguish and dismay on that evening which had shattered all their hopes and almost all their beliefs at one fell blow. They must have parted in a state of the most dreadful terror, though each of them carried away within him a mighty thought which could never be wrested from him. And if, on the eve of the crucifixion, the Master could have seen what He would look like when taken from the cross, would he have mounted the cross and died as he did?” (Penguin 1955, tran. by David Magarshak, 446-7).
Well if you got through all that reading...then the answer to Ippolit's question for us is surely YES. God did know how hard the crucifixion would be upon Him, those disciples and believers who followed Jesus, but still went through with it ultimately for their (and our) benefit. Just as today God has us go through many hardships that we do not fully understand, but ultimately it is for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).
However, what we see today is hindsight. We know the Christ has risen. Nevertheless, those disciples looked upon Jesus and were haunted just as that painting is haunting by showing a lifeless savior and a hope/promise questioned. It seems as though many in the world are stuck in this position today. Agnostics and those apathetic to His existence sit upon this haunting precipice exhibited in this painting.
I pray you have a blessed Holy Saturday. Moreover, I pray you have a blessed Resurrection Day for those of us who have stepped off the precipice in faith knowing He has risen and one day we will rise to meet Him soon.
