With­out East­er and the Res­ur­rec­tion from the dead of Je­sus Christ, Chris­tian­i­ty can be count­ed as a use­ful at­tempt to get the world com­mu­ni­ty be­liev­ing in a form of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty which promis­es a bet­ter life af­ter our earth­ly ex­pe­ri­ence. If that does not be­come re­al, then the doc­trine falls away in its claim to be of eter­nal im­por­tance.

The rea­son for this is that the Chris­t­ian doc­trine and be­ing alive in prac­tice are based on Je­sus Christ ris­ing from the dead on the cross of Cal­vary, He hav­ing giv­en His life so that all of hu­man­i­ty could be saved from their in­evitable and de­served death, to a new awak­en­ing with their Sav­iour-King and the eter­nal God the Fa­ther.

To place the un­der­stand­ing in sec­u­lar terms, that’s the bot­tom line of Chris­tian­i­ty.

“For God so loved the world that he gave His on­ly be­got­ten Son (Je­sus the Christ) that whoso­ev­er be­lieves in Him shall not per­ish but have ever­last­ing life.” That is the promise giv­en by Matthew, one of Je­sus’ most de­vot­ed dis­ci­ples.

Christ, in the the­ol­o­gy of Chris­tian­i­ty, is record­ed as hav­ing done just that, re­turn­ing from death to ever­last­ing life, and in so do­ing made the Chris­t­ian faith re­al and abid­ing in our world to­day.

Whether each in­di­vid­ual be­lieves in the Chris­t­ian faith or not, there is cer­tain to be agree­ment that our world can do with the sav­ing grace and peace, love for our fel­low man and the promise of a re­new­al in our hu­man­i­ty when God makes His “tri­umphal re­turn” to mark the end of an era of dom­i­na­tion by the Un­holy Spir­it.

This is not an at­tempt to evan­ge­lise read­ers. Rather, it is to mark the spot of our ex­is­tence in the world of the 21st cen­tu­ry, filled with tur­bu­lence and the sav­agery of man-to-man vi­o­lence, which seems to go on, even in­ten­si­fy, with no hope of res­o­lu­tion. In such cir­cum­stances, it seems as­sured that mankind will not ex­pe­ri­ence peace and har­mo­ny.

In the con­text of liv­ing in a sec­u­lar ba­sis on hope, an event of the last week brought a mea­sure of re­lief from the all-too-of­ten neg­a­tive of be­ing a na­tion in a world in need of a re­plen­ish­ment of good­will with prospects for the mor­row. For a cou­ple days, a com­pa­ny of Boy Scouts and their lead­ers spent qual­i­ty time in an overnight camp at the res­i­dence of Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo with the First Gen­tle­man, Ker­wyn Gar­cia.

It will be dif­fi­cult to think of a more fit­ting and mean­ing­ful man­ner to ush­er in the East­er cel­e­bra­tions of the risen Christ.

And while the present gives enough en­cour­age­ment to hu­mankind to turn away from that which has made their ex­is­tence and their demon­strat­ed ca­pac­i­ty for de­struc­tion so very ap­par­ent, the small mer­cies, as seen in the scouts’ camp be­ing giv­en pres­i­den­tial recog­ni­tion for a valiant at­tempt to be more like Je­sus, is a dis­tinc­tion to be recog­nised.

The hope is that through the pur­suit of the badges, the teenage boys will dis­play a hu­man­i­ty so lack­ing in the world of the present.