I was going to put this in the “Conversations with Spouses” thread, but since it (a) references politics, (b) references religion, and © is technically about my kid, I thought it probably belonged in P&R.
I haven’t done a great job educating my kids on Bible stories… not even the more important ones. In my defense, I’m an atheist and my kids seem to have settled on unbelief as well… though my eldest has started to edge into “Earth Mother Nature Spirit of Us All” kind of territory.
Anyway, my youngest daughter (15) asked about the Easter story last night at the dinner table. She was basically asking for clarification. “Easter is when Jesus came back from the dead right? He died, then he came back on Easter and then he died again, right?”
I tried to clear it up for her, explaining about Good Friday, the three days in the tomb, the Resurrection, and finally the Ascension.
She was appropriately incredulous about this, and asked how long zombie-Jesus was supposed to have stuck around.
“A few weeks,” I answered.
“And who saw him, after he came back from the dead? Did the Romans keep any records of this?”
“No,” I said, “it was mostly his followers that provided eyewitness accounts.”
Again, she was appropriately dubious.
“Really? Just his friends?”
This kind of put me in the weird place of defending the origin story of a religion that I no longer subscribed to. I didn’t want to imply to her that there was much merit to the tale, but at the same time I didn’t want to disparage (too much) the core beliefs that her grandparents were still very much invested in.
“Well,” I answered, “the Bible does say that more people than just the Apostles saw Jesus after he came back.”
“Does it say who? Like, anyone who wasn’t invested in the story?”
“No, it just says that ‘many’ people saw him. No names outside his inner circle, just ‘many people’.”
She raised her eyebrow at this. “That sounds like a Donald Trump tweet.”
I have NEVER been more proud of my kid.