Death and Resurrection, what's your focus?

For some reason lately, maybe because it’s the Easter season or maybe because I seem to have noticed it in media more lately; I’ve been thinking that maybe we have our focus all wrong in Christianity.  When you see a church displayed in media, you normally see a cross or a crucifix.  When you drive by a church on any corner, they often times have a cross either out front or on the top.  If not outside than almost certainly on the inside if they own their own building.

On the other hand, we see a picture of an open tomb usually once a year, on Easter Sunday.  Why is that the case?  Perhaps that is why I also see such an emphasis placed on how awful of a sinner we are even as believers.  Sin is not to be overlooked in any sense of the word.  However, doesn’t the Bible refer to God’s children as saints more often than as sinners in the New Testament?  I’m not sure on that btw, that may have been just in some sermon I heard.

Shouldn’t our focus be more on the resurrection than the death, or at the very least a little more balanced?  Christ’s death doesn’t mean anything outside of the resurrection, right?  If He didn’t rise from the dead than He was just another prophet and moral teacher.  If He did rise from the dead though, than we need to focus on that and put our hope in that.

That sounds crazy to my human brain that likes to think of itself as fairly logical.  How does that kind of idea implant itself in one’s mind anyhow?  Some people say it’s purely a result of being raised that way.  There are plenty of people though who walk away from the faith after being raised that way and also plenty of people who weren’t raised that way who come to believe in Christ resurrected later in life.

The only thing that can really explain it is trust and faith.  Many atheists look at faith as something reserved for mere simpletons.  I would counter that argument by saying everyone has a certain level of faith, it’s simply a matter of what or Whom you put your faith in.  

Surely we can agree that just as much as people’s views of God and the Church have shifted among believers views of science and medicine among atheists have shifted usually by a significant degree more.  I simply lose track of when the big bang was supposed to have happened; it has changed so many times since when I was growing up as to just how many millions or billions of years ago that happened.

Why are we so hesitant to focus on the empty tomb in addition to the cross?  Maybe in my mind I can just start picturing the empty tomb next to a cross every time I see one in a church or in media.  Maybe some churches already do this.  Jesus’ sacrifice was amazing and I’m by no means trying to make light of this.  It just seems odd that we focus on death rather than life.

That seems to permeate us as a group of believers into our very core.  It also permeates our culture if you watch the news for a half hour.  The human mind is seemingly bent to focus on the negative period, and especially on death for some reason.  Death is not to be taken lightly of course, but neither is life.  Unfortunately stories of life rarely make front page news.

As someone who calls Christ Lord and Savior of his own life, I need to be primarily about giving life to others.  There is so much negativity in daily life, from daily headlines to toxic work environments to messy home lives to any number of other things.  The world desperately needs to hear about life that can only be found in Christ.