Episode Details

It’s Holy Week for many of the world’s 2.6 billion Christians (for Eastern Orthodox, it’s next week.) Easter marks the most important holiday in the Christian calendar—the date of Jesus’ alleged resurrection.

But what if you don’t believe? Or if you have major questions about it? Does Easter still matter? Can this holiday still be meaningful if you’re not sure about the whole bodily resurrection thing?

Fifteen years ago, I would’ve said, absolutely not. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, there’s no point and you’re not in the club!!!

For those of us who were raised to read the Bible literally, questioning the resurrection is dangerous territory. In these traditions, miracles are proof of God’s existence, the very cornerstone of faith—if you don’t believe in them, everything else falls apart. In this black-and-white worldview, any speck of doubt can put you on the path to Hell.

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I spent years trying to convince myself to believe Bible stories were factually true, even as scientific evidence and my own lived experience contradicted this interpretation. I was the red-faced teen who tried to argue her high school biology teacher out of teaching evolution. Luckily, I lost.

During this era, I felt constantly at war with myself. How could I silence my doubts while still living in integrity? Answer: I couldn’t. It was a losing battle.

And so I went to the opposite extreme: scientific materialism. My family quit church. I stopped believe in God or anything else that couldn’t be historically or scientifically verified.

But that didn’t satisfy me either. Science is a wonderful tool, but it doesn’t provide a moral framework or answer big life questions about meaning and purpose. I had torn down my old belief structure that was no longer serving me, but I didn’t have anything to replace it with.

The 3+ years of this Substack has been me finding my way to something new—a new way to think about ethics and morality (and how to teach those things to my kids) and to feed the spiritual hunger that’s always been a part of me.

And one of the conclusions I’ve been circling is this: belief is not the most important thing. It might not even be top 10! Basing an entire theory of salvation on belief seems hopeless, because beliefs fluctuate. They evolve. Any system that encourages people to stay frozen at the moment of conversion is, frankly, ridiculous.

Imagine, for example, a marriage where the wedding ceremony was the most important part. Every day that you loved your spouse as much as you did on your wedding day counted as success. But every time you fought with them or checked out a stranger at the gym or envied a single friend meant failure. People under this situation would likely grit their teeth and try to avoid changing (which is impossible) or just give up and get divorced.

In marriage, we recognize that feelings fluctuate. Staying married is arguably more about what you do than what you feel or believe at a given moment. You honor your promises, sometimes joyfully and sometimes sulkily. The point is: you show up.

I think the church (and, TBH, society as a whole) would be a lot healthier if we stopped prioritizing litmus tests and instead focused on showing up.

Sure, you might say, showing up is important, but what about the resurrection? Isn’t belief in the resurrection kind of a dealbreaker for being a Christian?

Eh, I don’t think so? And I’d argue there’s good evidence on my side. In her latest book, Miracl