BLOG ARTICLE

The other day I was listening to a Diary of a CEO podcast about the ‘singularity’—a point, particularly in physics, where reality can no longer be described or understood. The conversation morphed, as such conversations inevitably do, into a discussion about whether God exists.

The host, Steven Bartlett, spoke of his childhood engagement with Christianity, the destabilising impact of his dalliance with the ‘new atheists,’ and his uneasy resignation to his inability to answer life’s existential questions. Bartlett opined that as long as one is a ‘good’ person, surely a reasonable God would not require anything further.

I’m a good person.

It struck me that this seemingly modest claim rests on a deeper assumption about what our real problem is.

First, it assumes we can define what ‘good’ is apart from God, or apart from some absolute source of ‘goodness.’ And even if we could define the good, it presumes we can attain it unaided or through the grit of self-sufficient effort.

But most of all, it fails to fully diagnose the core problem that lies at the heart of the human condition.

What if—I’m a good person—is not the answer to our greatest problem? What if the primary issue between humanity and God is not mere moral deficiency but something deeper?

The Christian tradition names the problem differently. It does not begin with measurements of goodness, but with sin and death.

Sin (gk harmatia: missing the mark) is not merely moral failure but severance from the source of life. Once the divine umbilical cord is cut, death ensues—not merely mortal death, but spiritual death. There can be no full human life apart from the source of life. And so, humanity is consigned to “walk in the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps 23).

In his poem, Sailing to Byzantium, W. B. Yeats captures the core of the human dilemma: we are beings that are “fastened to a dying animal.”

We die.

This is the human condition—not merely flawed but bound to death.

“The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations …
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.”
Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”

Oh, what a tragedy that the magnificent wonder of embodied existence is eclipsed by devastating cessation. Oh, that the unique breath of human life is extinguished. Where energy once danced, breath moved, and love echoed, the life-that-was leaves only a vacant imprint.
Death, we must understand, is a travesty, not the divine template.

Dylan Thomas captures the fight against death that should obsess our days—

“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

And yet, instead of confronting the most pressing question in the face of this ruin—how do we not die?—we distract ourselves with a more manageable one: how do I be a good person?

This is not to dismiss the pursuit of goodness. It is to acknowledge that being good doesn’t resolve the predicament of death.

I’m a good person.

Perhaps. But one day, I will be a dead one.

In the face of death, goodness, while good, is not going to assist us. Goodness is not the soothing balm it promises to be. It cannot arrest decay.

All the while, we sidestep mortality for the comfort of morality. But why? Why do we fixate on our goodness while avoiding the insatiability of the grave?

Perhaps it is because goodness feels controllable—an endeavour we can improve. Or perhaps we persist in such framing because, if the problem is merely moral improvement, Jesus becomes optional rather than essential. If death is the issue, however, then the unique claims of Jesus—as the only one who conquers death— become unavoidable.

This is where the Easter message of the Christian faith is most powerful. If death is the problem, resurrection—not self-improvement— is the answer.

Christianity is not about being ‘good’ enough for God but about a God who is so full of life that the death of death is inevitable. On the cross, Jesus entered our death. Yet, because He is the Lord of life, death could not hold him. No—death was consumed by life as Jesus rose from the dead. His resurrection broke death from the inside.

Jesus’ Easter journey unfastened humanity from death and fastened it to life. In union with Christ, the transfer from death to life is complete. No longer merely “fastened to a dying animal,” those united to Christ are fastened to living one—the one who brings life, and life to the full (John 10:10).

The Easter events are not about human endeavours to achieve ‘goodness’ but about God’s goodness to defeat death.

If we diagnose our primary problem as the need to be good, we will conclude that we do not need the unique work of Jesus’ life, cross, or empty tomb. We will, like Steven Bartlett, hope that nothing more is required than moral effort.

But if our true predicament is death, then only the one who can conquer death will suffice.

This Easter, beloved, remember: death has died through the life of God.

“For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal
body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on
imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the
saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’”
(1 Cor 15:53-54)

Dr Jacqueline Service
Director, St Mark's National Theological Centre