Good “Good” Friday
Obviously Easter is fast approaching and it always gets me into a thoughtful frame of mind. Growing up, Good Friday has always been a bad day, with Easter good, giving a type of Ying/Yang relationship. However, in growing I’ve always seen Good Friday as the central day in the Christian calender, a day commemorating Jesus’ death. Yet it is an essential paradox that Good Friday is a sombre day and yet it is the day that Christians believe is the source of the salvation of mankind. Can the day where an innocent is brutally murdered be considered good? I’ve known many people treat the name “Good Friday” as ironic in this way. ‘Surely it should be called Bad Friday’, a friend told a teacher back at Primary School. It’s like that moment in Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Kahn where Spock dies to save the Enterprise from being destroyed, it’s logical as Spock points out, ‘The needs of many outweigh the needs of one’, but at the same time it’s a moment full of pathos. So is Good Friday really Good or ”Good”?
Of course, looking at it from this narrow perspective is forgetting about Easter Sunday, which is intrinsically a part of Good Friday. Without the Resurrection of Christ (whether this was a disciple delusion or real as I believe) there is no understanding of the forgiveness of sins, no Holy Spirit and no Christianity. Whether it happened or not, this understanding is central to the disciples’ message to the world. And what is certain is that they believed in this wholeheartedly, or else there is no way they would have willingly sacrificed their lives over compromising their beliefs. And without Good Friday there is no Easter Sunday. Easter is the day of re-birth, but it is built upon the foundation of the destruction of death. Therefore there is no simple Good/”Good” relationship going on.
This still evades the question however, is it just that a man dies horribly for something that he is innocent of? The answer is, of course not and the next question is how can a just God allow this “cosmic child abuse” (as Steve Chalke calls it) to happen? It’s a difficult question and one impossible to answer without the context of sacrifices as a payment for sin back in the Old Testament. “The wages of sin is death” is the way Paul puts it in one of his letters, so Christians believe that Jesus’ blood acts as a permanent sacrifice for all those who wish to accept it. Of course, Jesus is part of the Holy Trinity (the three forms of God), so in effect the Christian view is that God is sacrificing himself in place of us; for all that we’ve done wrong past or future. Celebrating Good Friday would thus be wrong just as celebrating inflicting pain on someone else would be. However, Good Friday is anything but bad in a Christian perspective, it is the day of our salvation, but also a day of rememberance.
Anyway, Theology-aside I hope everyone has a reflective Good Friday and a chocolate-filled Easter Sunday. Who said commercialism was all-bad? What would a world without Easter-eggs be like?
