So, What Do YOU Have Against the Resurrection Rabbit?

For one brief week I thought, perhaps, I had escaped the Resurrectionists this year.

Resurrectionists, (not to be confused with insurrectionists, although I do consider them radicals,) will never wish you a Happy Easter. They are passionate about using the term Resurrection Day instead. They would surely disagree with Shakespeare and contend that "Arose" by any other name smells.

So Easter 2011 had passed, and I was happily rationing my Cadbury mini-eggs to last another fortnight when BLAM! Out came the double barrels aimed not only at the term Easter, but a shot was taken at Easter eggs too. Suddenly, I was being judged guilty of supporting the pagan god Ishtar! Ishtar is the ancient Sumero-Babylonian fertility goddess. According to my accuser du jour, Ishtar encouraged her worshipers to indulge in springtime orgies to propagate a new crop of infant sacrifices for the following year. Apparently Ishtar did not have much faith in the math proficiencies of her subjects, because they had to use eggs as counting markers to make sure they got the numbers right.

One of the problems with that explanation is that this happened centuries before Jesus rose from the dead. One really cannot have an "origin" for Easter that pre-dates Jesus' arrival on Earth. Any claim that early Christians were foolish enough to adopt Ishtar's pagan rites is culling the wrong mission field.

A second problem is that linguistic evidence supports the idea that "Easter" came, not from Babylonian culture, but from the Anglo-Saxons. Old English 'Eastre' was the goddess of the sunrise in Northumbria. The root is austra-, and in Proto-Germanic languages it meant "to shine" or "of the east."

Early missionaries to the Angles, Saxons, and Celts followed a philosophy somewhat in line with the Wycliffe Bible Translators of today: minimal impact on indigenous cultures. Unlike the missionary endeavors that sprang from the Reformation Era and resulted in major upheaval among the North American natives, emphasis was on changing the heart, not on effecting outward change in tribal customs.

From my perspective, that is neither adopting nor adapting paganism. It is, rather, incremental restoration of the original Creation. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof... Psalm 24:1

The term "Easter egg" does not appear in English until 1825. The symbolism of new life is so obvious to anyone one who has ever observed a hatchling emerge from its shell that it is almost ludicrous to posit that we "learned" this from pagans. Time, space, and the Holy Spirit all sever me from the celebrations from ancient Babylonia.

But for those who have connected with the occult, there may indeed be a need for caution. In 1 Corinthians 10:23, Paul writes that all things are lawful. With unbelievers, he eats meat without concern so that he won't come off as priggish and ruin his testimony. With new converts, he abstains— for the sake of their conscience, not his. In verses 29 and 30 he gives his rationale for this apparent contradiction: For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?
English Standard Version

On a whim, I decided to check that verse in another translation. Perhaps you will be as delighted in the reference to eggs as I was.

But, except for these special cases, I'm not going to walk around on eggshells worrying about what small-minded people might say; I'm going to stride free and easy, knowing what our large-minded Master has already said.
1 Corinthians 10:29 — The Bible in Contemporary Language, Copyright © 2002 by Eugene Peterson.