I took a course in art last winter. I learnt the difference between a fine oil painting, and a mechanical thing, like a photograph. The photograph shows only the reality. The painting shows not only the reality, but the dream behind it. It’s our dreams, doctor, that carry us on. They separate us from the beasts. I wouldn’t want to go on living if I thought it was all just eating, and sleeping, and taking my clothes off, I mean putting them on… — Harvey

Americans, at least, seem fascinated in knowing what the world of the prophets looked like.  We spend hours reading and watching material about how Jesus grew up.  It seems that every week there is a new scroll or tablet or tomb that is found that gives us a little more insight into the world of the Bible. There are advertisements for trips to the Holy Land that regularly show up in my email and websites.  “Walk in the footsteps of Jesus!”  “See what Moses saw!”.  A lot of people want to be baptized in the River Jordan or say a prayer at the Wailing Wall.  It seems that we think that by learning about the ancient world and experiencing it ourselves, we will know more about our faith.

I think that such things are interesting, but they miss the point.

Faith does not require evidence, or at least not the kind of evidence you dig up out of a hillside in Israel.  Archeologists could dig up a Roman record that read “On the third day of Venus, in the month of April, on the orders of Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, a Jewish preacher and carpenter from Galilee, going by the name of Jesus, was crucified in Jerusalem for the crimes of treason and blasphemy.”, and it wouldn’t change my beliefs at all.

My faith is the faith that I gained through reading the Scripture, through talking about it with elders and friends, and through what I have seen and done in life.  Relics and ancient buildings are nothing more than curiosities for me.  They don’t hurt, but neither do they help.  I don’t need anything concrete upon which to base something that is anything but concrete.

As we celebrate the rebirth of Jesus Christ today, we must remember that the important thing is not the rock that was rolled away from his tomb, rather it is the act of its being moved.  The hill on which he died and the tomb in which he lay are nothing but places.  The shroud he wore is nothing but linen.  The reason he died and the reason he rose again is what we need to concentrate on.