On Good Friday

I've been getting a lot of reading done in my daily 2 hours in the car. Simply Audio Books provides a great Netflix-like service for books-on-CD rentals that I've been using for almost a year now. The latest book I've been going through is called What If 2 edited by Robert Cowley. It's a collection of essays by scholars regarding various "close calls" in history, extrapolating on what might have happened to the course of human events if various things had failed to occur. Examples:

• Harold Godwinson defeats William at the Battle of Hastings: Scandinavian culture flourishes throughout Europe, Latin culture recedes, and I'd be blogging in Danish or its linguistic heir.
• China beats Columbus to the New World: Apparently the Chinese had a pretty good exploratory fleet going on during the Ming Dynasty, and they had this admiral named Zheng He who was very good at acquiring tributes to the emperor from other nations in exchange for silks and other Chinese goods. His wanderings were put to a halt after a change in administration, so he never got a chance to head out into the Pacific, but the essay theorizes that if Zheng He had made it to America (probably via Alaska) he would have gotten the same out of the Iroquois Confederacy. Don't quite see how, since they mostly settled in eastern North America...
• Neville Chamberlain recommends Lord Halifax as his replacement instead of Churchill: Great Britain makes peace with Germany, so there is no British/American partnership after Pearl Harbor. Stalin eventually defeats Hitler and conquers Europe. America, ignoring Europe, focuses its full attention on the Pacific theater. However, there being no help from Britain, the Manhattan Project fails to materialize and America has no option but to get into a war of attrition with Japan. The Soviet Union gets the bomb. I blog in Russian.

Another counterfactual history example posed by Carlos Eire of Yale is what if Pontius Pilate had ignored the wishes of the crowd at the end of Passover and had let Jesus go free instead of Barabbas? Eire points out that from Pilate's perspective, Barabbas would have been much more highly favored an executionee than Jesus. Barabbas was a member of a Jewish faction that sought to overthrow the Roman occupation of Judea, had staged an insurrection, and had murdered at least one person. Jesus, on the other hand, hadn't done anything except say some things that the locals didn't like. In fact, the reason the crowd that night was so hung up on having Him killed was that He wasn't trying to lead an insurrection against Rome. Pilate even had pressure from his own wife to let Jesus be, when she says, "Have nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of Him" (Matthew 27:19). Pilate himself sees no reason to kill Jesus, saying to the people, "You have brought this man to me as one who misleads the people. And indeed, having examined Him in your presence, I have found no fault in this man concerning those things of which you accuse him. Neither did Herod, for I sent you back to him, and indeed nothing deserving of death has been done by Him" (Luke 23:14-15).

However, as a Christian, I reject the supposition that the final decison by Pilate was a close call. Without the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, there can be no salvation by faith, and humanity would be doomed. Why? Others have said it much more eloquently than I, but bottom line, being in heaven with God requires perfection on our part. None of us are perfect. We've sinned. It requires sacrifice to take away that sin. A lot of sacrifice. See the Old Testament for details. Jesus' crucifixion was that sacrifice for our sins. Since He was the only person in the history of humanity who had never sinned, only His sacrifice had sufficient weight to pay for the sins of us all. See the New Testament for details. To take advantage of it, all we have to do is recognize that it happened, that we are in need of it, and that Jesus is our Lord. "And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized, and wash your sins away, calling on His name" (Acts 22:16).

In spite of the huge case against Barabbas' release, Pilate acquiesced to the will of the people anyway and had my Lord tortured and killed. Clearly God had a plan here, and I'm eternally thankful that He did.

For the record, Eire goes on to theorize that if Jesus hadn't been killed that day, He would have continued doing what He had been doing for the past 3 years, eventually being forced to watch the destruction of the Jewish temple, and dying of old age with his disciple and best friend John at His side. Christianity as we know it today would be even more splintered than it tragically is, existing as various hybridizations of Judaism mixed with Jesus' teachings. But without that seminal cornerstone event, however, it would be very empty indeed.