Paul GrahamVerified account

When you first talk to a rabbi about conversion, the two topics on the agenda are circumcision and, if you were raised Christian, what your thoughts are on this Christ business. Your wee-wee and Jesus, that's what you talk about, and in very serious tones too.

What (if anything) Jesus Christ means to you also confronts you on days like today, Easter Sunday, as Christian Twitter announces that the Son of God died and is risen, thus defeating death for all of us. Coming a week after passover, it's a striking juxtaposition of belief.

Western culture is absolutely steeped in Christian thought (though my not realize it nowadays), so it's almost impossible to leave that reference frame. But....this is the first time observing Christianity's key holiday from 'the outside', and boy, does is look a little kooky.

As an anecdotal illustration, years ago the Israeli girlfriend (recent US immigrant) asked me about Easter and what it all meant. After giving her a whirlwind tour of the gospels and the crucifixion, she asks me, puzzled looking: "So where's the rabbit come into the story?"

Christianity's moral inversion of strong and weak, rich and poor (e.g. seeing divinity in the violent death of an alleged criminal) and fascination with messianic millenarianism (e.g. bringing the Kingdom of God into being either in this life or the next) is a radical philosophy.

It's understandable why the Roman world of the time observed it with ridicule and then alarm: It was a complete break with the values of the time. Even now, it's unlike most cultural worldviews (though its values, e.g., 'human rights', have spread along with Western hegemony).

Long of way of saying: it's odd to see the Easter season 'from the outside' for the first time. Nothing quite like seeing what was once familiar as novel and foreign. It's an intellectual out-of-body experience: jarring and life-changing. A sort of religious phantom limb, almost.

British PM Benjamin Disraeli (born Jewish, converted to Christianity) when asked by Queen Victoria what religion he *really* was, supposedly replied: I'm the blank page between the Old and New Testaments in the bible. It's an interesting middle ground.