At the very beginning, the penalty for failing to believe in the resurrection, in the case of doubting Thomas, was to be told that others might be more blessed than he. In the 16th. and 17th. centuries, the penalty for declaring that you did not believe in the resurrection might well be burning at the stake. One would need to be obtuse not to see that a metamorphosis of opinion had taken place. The composer Verdi, in his operas Aida and Don Carlos, went out of his way to portray the clergy as the most reactionary, cruel, and stupid class in the community. Yet in the beginning, their job was to bring life and hope to a weary and disillusioned world. Not many people succeed in turning a great blessing into a liability; so it is not disloyal to the Church to ask what went wrong and why? And is it still wrong today?
The Pauline Epistles encourage us to put on the mind of Christ. Well, let us take him at his word, and try to do so! Let us try to put ourselves into the position Jesus was in, whilst he was in the desert trying to work out what exactly his vocation was, and how others would expect him to implement it? Except of course, that we are in Europe today, and not in Palestine 2000 years ago, and what is more we have the benefit of his experience so long ago.
He is supposed to have raised three people from death; Jairus’ daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus. In John’s Gospel, he is supposed to have said on two occasions that anyone who believed in him would never see death, whatever he meant by that phrase. So he evidently believed that one should allow one’s imagination considerable latitude in deciding what might be possible. Since his time many people have speculated on the nature of immortality, of the possibilities of infinity and of different worlds or universes, and in the last hundred years of time-machines. It should be obvious to anyone prepared to put on the mind of Christ that there has been quite enough thought, and what is needed now is a bit of action. However pleasant it is to speculate about infinite worlds, whether they are possible, and whether they exist beyond our ken; it does not actually result in anything being done to change or improve the society in which we live. It is a little bit like the hero in Flecker’s Hassan wondering whether a piece of paper floating down from an upstairs window, might be a new Chapter of the Koran. Christ did not speculate about political philosophies, when he emerged from the desert; he set to work at once. So should we. Now if action is required, one place to begin is with the human mind itself.