It’s Easter Sunday and I am grumpy and tired and it’s raining and my son has just learned to whistle and WILL NOT STOP PRACTICING IT. Meanwhile – just as background, if you’ve been wondering about where I am – I have been getting in debates hither and yon about whether:

1) It is better to have a liberal method (i.e. “We welcome all views with an open mind and a charitable tone, due to the awareness that we may be wrong”); OR it is better to have actual progressive convictions (i.e. “No, seriously, oppression of queer folks/women/people of color/people with disabilities/poor folks is actually objectively bad, and this is a claim I make and hold, and don’t think might be wrong.”)

2) It is better for people in positions of authority to absolutely FALL OVER themselves trying to gently, gently convince their more-privileged charges that they really ought to listen to less-privileged folks, even if that looks suspiciously like, oh, pretty much EVERY OTHER unjust system ever where the most-privileged have attention lavished upon them and everyone else is kindly invited to shut up and not raise any icky-poo uncomfortable conflict drama; OR… not.

Similar themes, no? Two different conversations. Hard conversations. With people I care about and admire and hate disagreeing with. And if you know me at all, you probably know that I come down squarely in the latter camp. But, anyway, now it’s Easter. And those conversations have me thinking about why I or anyone else should care.

“Resurrection” is an Easter-only word for many Christians, practically a technical term. That’s what Easter’s supposed to be about: Jesus’ resurrection, often taken to mean Jesus’ resuscitation. The payoff of which is often understood to be, “Hey! I don’t have to die, after all. Hooray! Well, I mean, I have to die, but it’s all pretend, because I’ll be in heaven, or else maybe asleep to be revived later.”

Or, for the crunchy intellectually earnest lefty-evangy Christians, it’s an Easter-and-Wendell-Berry word: We PRACTICE resurrection. We grow fancy chard in our backyards and we come to deep moral convictions based our fearlessness toward death, and we consult said convictions whenever we are asked What Other People Ought To Do, In Theory.

Yeah, well… yeah. Can we talk about something else, though, for a minute? Once there was a Palestinian Jew, born as a refugee, possibly a landless day-laborer or possibly middle class, who while he was alive lived in relative obscurity — as most people who’ve ever lived do — and then was tortured and killed by the government for insurrection: exactly none of which would have been seen as remarkable in that day. Later some of his friends talked about his death in a way which suggested they believed him to be a martyr, and believed God to have vindicated his death as (so they believed) God vindicates all the righteous martyrs.

This is the point in the story where those of us who have been appointed religious authorities on matters Jesusy sometimes like to say “AHA!” loudly. “It was GOD who vindicated the righteous martyr. Not US. Therefore (fingerwag, fingerwag) you Really Ought Not Try To Bring About Justice Through Human Means Because It’s God Who Does It.” The only justice worth striving for is one which proceeds from proper theological principles.

I suppose that’s one way to see it. This week I watched an online discussion unfold about EXACTLY WHICH white male evangelical pastor endorsed wives submitting to domestic violence, and to PRECISELY WHICH degree they each endorse same, and WHAT SCRUPULOUSLY EXACTING LEVEL OF NUANCE might be brought to bear upon the VERY SUBTLE WAYS in which such endorsement does and does not reflect upon the religious organizations with which they are affiliated, and EXACTLY WHICH claims the various debaters were using to defend their arguments and whether they were logically sound, and EXACTLY WHAT view of scripture and tradition you have to hold in order to not endorse wife-beating for reasons which are THEOLOGICALLY ABOVE REPROACH.

Because where domestic violence is concerned, clearly the most important thing is to be theologically above reproach. (My husband, God bless him, finally got in there and said “Wow, dudes. You sure showed each other. In all your back and forth you never mentioned or told the story of a single woman. How about you think about that? Meanwhile, here is a link to a domestic violence shelter in your area. They are looking for volunteers.”)

So, yeah, that’s one way of looking at it. Since vindication is coming from God, we’d better be sure we don’t seek any sort of vindication that doesn’t proceed logically and unassailably from theologically-defensible views of God.

Hey, though! Here’s another possibility: People who’ve been martyred — or squashed, ground up, strung up, exploited, hit, had their bodies used to signify less-than-human, mocked, beaten up in restrooms to the point of seizure, insulted, spat on, thrown in jail, etc. — have vindication coming that they don’t depend on our well-intentioned largesse for, fellow earnest do-gooders who are in a position to have a well-thought-out position. Maybe that’s what is meant by God’s vindication.

So, ergo, I submit: Either Easter has no truth in it whatsoever (in which case, don’t get me wrong, I’m totes down the bunnies and the chocolate and the eggs and the Peeps) or else vindication is coming. And it’s NOT coming about as a result of our earnest mullings-over, or our careful placating and ego-stroking and concern above all to keep from giving offense. And it is DEFINITELY NOT coming such a way that you have to have a proper view of scripture/authority/theological method before you’re allowed to care abot people being beaten. (JUST AS AN EXAMPLE.)

I honestly don’t know which is true, some days. Some days it’s a struggle to believe there’s anything more lasting than Peeps. Sometimes it’s other Christians making the religious version of Easter look implausible. Some days, in some eyes, I’m sure, it’s me doing the very same.