Because so many people don't want to believe in the resurrection

If Jesus Christ died and came back to life, then our modern secular world view is wrong.

“Now, if Christ is preached, who rises from the dead, how do some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ does not rise, then our preaching is in vain: and your faith is also in vain. " (1 Corinthians 15: 12-14)

These words of St. Paul in his first letter to the Church of Corinth go straight to the point. If Christ did not physically rise from the dead, then our religion is in vain. He had no "vanity" in mind in the sense of being overly proud of his appearance, but vanity in the sense of the Preacher of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities; everything is vanity. "

St. Paul is telling us that if the resurrection is not literally true, then we are literally wasting time with Christianity. He is not interested in the social function of religion as a "community of believers", even if it "unites people" or "gives people a purpose" or any other subjective theology of well-being. He's talking about objective truth and telling us not to waste time.

But the modern world has difficulties with the resurrection, and in general with miracles and all that is supernatural. At least since the nineteenth century (or perhaps since we left Eden), in particular the western mind has embarked on a campaign of demythologization of the Faith preached by the Apostles. We read our Bibles as good psychologists, trying to extract some ethical wisdom or life from stories, but without taking seriously the miracles that are so clearly proclaimed.

We modern and sophisticated know better than our ancestors. We are enlightened, scientific, rational - not like those people in ancient times who believed anything preachers preached to them. Of course, this is a ridiculous caricature of history, our history and our ancestors. We moderns are not unlike grumpy teenagers who think they know better than our parents and grandparents and think that whatever they believed and appreciated for this reason should be rejected.

But by giving the devil the due, so to speak, we can honestly ask ourselves: why don't we want to believe in the resurrection? What's in this particular doctrine that we find so disturbing? Why have so many modern "theologians" made a career for themselves by interpreting the Resurrection as something other than what the New Testament manifestly teaches it was - that is, a dead man who comes back to life? (The current Greek phrase in the New Testament - anastasis ton nekron - literally means "a standing corpse".)

To begin with, quite innocuously, it is obvious that the doctrine of the resurrection is strange. We have never seen a dead man rise from his grave before, so it's no wonder that we should resist resisting this good news. The same generation of Jesus - and every generation since - has been in the same position of disbelief at the surprising proclamation of a standing corpse.

The old Aristotle (the "master of those who know") teaches us that we learn first through the experience of direct sense, and then from experiences of repeated sense our mind extracts concepts, which we then understand intellectually. We know what life is, because we have seen many living beings. And we know what death is, because we have seen many dead things. And we know that living things die, but dead things do not come back to life, because we have only ever seen things happen in this order.

We also like life and don't like death. Healthy organisms have a healthy instinct for self-preservation and a healthy aversion to anything that threatens their continuous state of life. Human beings, with our rationality and ability to anticipate the future, know and fear our own mortality, and we know and fear the mortality of those we love. Simply put, death is terrible. It can ruin your whole day (or decade) when someone you love dies. We hate death, and rightly so.

We invent all kinds of stories to comfort us. Much of our intellectual history can be read, in a certain light, as a story of rationalization of death. From ancient Buddhism and stoicism to modern materialism, we have tried to explain life to ourselves in such a way as to make death less lethal, or at least seem less. The pain is too unbearable. We have to explain it away. But perhaps we are wiser than our own philosophies. Maybe our pain is telling us something about the true nature of being. But maybe not. Maybe we are just evolved organisms that naturally want to survive and therefore hate death. It's a strange kind of comfort, but heroin is too, and many of us think it's a good idea too.

Now here's the problem. If Jesus Christ died and came back to life, then our modern and secular worldview is wrong. It must be, because it cannot accept the fact of the Resurrection. The inability of a theory to accommodate new data is a symptom of error. So if St. Paul is right, then we are wrong. This could be more terrible than death.

But it gets worse. Because if Christ has returned from the dead, this seems to indicate not only that we are wrong, but that he is right. The resurrection, for its strangeness, means that we must look again at Jesus, listen to his words again and hear his reproach against us again: be perfect. Love your neighbor. Forgive unconditionally. Be a saint.

We know what he said. We know our marching orders. We don't just want to obey. We want to do what we want to do, when and how we want to do it. We are completely modern in our idolatry of our choices. If Jesus is truly risen from the dead, then basically we know that we have a lot of soul that tries to do and a lot of repentance. And this could be even more terrible than being wrong. So, we don't want to believe in the resurrection.