“Every fucking person who takes a stand for somebody else always get beat down. And we watch. Over and over and over again, we watch it. But we should pay those motherfuckers for blowing the whistle. Because they make our lives better, and we could change the narrative. We could make one motherfucker have a good outcome for doing the right thing and that would make another motherfucker be brave enough to do the right thing…. We should take care of each other. Wouldn’t it be nice to be like ‘remember that time they was gonna kill Jesus but then he got all that money instead?’”

-Dave Chappelle, The Bird Revelation

For churches, the busiest Sunday of the year – Easter – is now over. We’ve packed up all the flowers and tablecloths, putting them away until this time next year, when the pastor will once again lead us in a chant of “He is Risen! (He is risen indeed!)”

Easter is typically a feel-good service where the church dutifully offers nostalgia and religious holiday vibes. We breathe a collective sigh of relief that though Jesus was murdered he came back again, and he wasn’t even gone that long! Just two short days in the grave, a turnaround so quick it’s almost as if his death didn’t happen.

So now we’ve moved on. We’re straight into spring and summer. Things will begin to wind down, as summer break begins and people take their vacations. We should be happy right? It’s a happy ending to the story – Jesus came back from the grave. God forgave. All is well.

But emotionally, I’m just not there. A week after “Good” Friday I am still bothered by this troubling question: Did Jesus really have to die?

Think about if you were his friend, even if he came back, you’d still be real shook up. He lived a life of profound love: love for enemies, love for the poor, love for those who persecute you. His message was to be generous, be brave, be self-sacrificing, and embrace risk. The only thing objectionable about him was that his love shined so brightly it revealed our own hate. And exposing our ugliness turned out to be an unforgivable sin. He showed us the limits of human potential and by comparison made us look so terribly bad.

But still, did he have to die? Was it all part of a predetermined divine plan or did violent humans escalate the situation to its terrible conclusion? What if they not only let him live, but heard him out? What if instead of silencing him, they just the public come to their own conclusions?

Maybe these aren’t great theological questions, just logical questions. I’m sure they’re religiously naïve questions.

I’ve been told my whole life it couldn’t have happened any other way. The story as it’s been told to me from a young age is the following:

God is perfect and cannot be around imperfection. To be contaminated by imperfection is a contradiction to his holiness. Therefore, when imperfection (the church calls it sin) is near, God eviscerates it like a death robot with a laser beam.

Now obviously, I am imperfect – mean spirited, selfish, fearful, and arrogant (to name a few). As are you, dear reader, though you have your own unique flaws. Therefore, the original plan was when we die God was going to send us to hell to be eviscerated for all eternity in order to maintain his holiness.

But as providence would have it, there existed a perfect human – Jesus, who was God in flesh. He graciously and recklessly agreed to be eviscerated instead of us. It goes without saying that someone would have to be killed in order to satisfy this requirement of perfection, but the “good news” (gospel) is that we are off the hook as Christ has already taken the brutal death on our behalf.

But is this really “good news”? I’m confused and unconvinced.

It seems that if you told me that one of my children would die a terrible death on behalf of another one of my children, I’d be devastated. And even if that dead child miraculously came back to life three days later, I think I’d still have post-traumatic stress disorder and a broken heart after the ordeal had ended.

If God is love, how can God also use violence to protect his holiness?

To say that “it had to happen” seems to imply that violence is inevitable and perhaps even possesses redemptive qualities. Followed to their logical conclusion these beliefs will begin to unconsciously influence your opinion on all kinds of different issues like abortion, the death penalty, gun control, and healthcare. They will shape our theology and ethics, they’ll become a cornerstone of our communities. Perhaps we will eventually become like our God, also using violence to protect our own holiness.

To a church fully vaccinated to violence the cross seems perfectly normal. The church calendar moves on: to Easter, to Pentecost, and beyond. We embrace the springtime sunshine and spiritual victories. But I’m still upset by it all. I’m stuck on Friday and shocked by the senseless killing of another innocent man.

Stuck on Friday