Easter reminds us how one message rises above all others

While I was doing some research in my study, my 4-year-old son, Calvin, dropped in for his usual visit. Looking around at cases of books and piles of magazines, he said, "Daddy, you sure have a lot of stuff to know." He then asked the incredibly poignant question, "Daddy, what is the most important thing you know?"

We live in an age of unprecedented information where studies show the average television is on eight hours a day and the average person spends more than three hours a day online.

Daily, we are bombarded with messages from television, film, radio, iPods, e-mail, text messages, cellphones, magazines, books, blogs, Web sites, mail, innumerable forms of advertising and newspapers.

The continual onslaught of information has the tragic effect of causing us to overlook the few things we truly must know because they are lost in a sea of trivia. Consequently, Calvin's question remains incredibly important for each of us to answer.

As a Christian pastor, I am reminded of the words of St. Paul, who said that of all that could be known, one fact literally rises above the others as the most important. Paul then states four basic facts about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death.

First Paul says Jesus died. His death is certain because Jesus suffered a horrendous beating and was crucified. Blood and water poured from his side when a spear was run through his heart. He was declared dead by a professional executioner.

Second Paul says Jesus was buried. Jesus' body was wrapped in roughly 100 pounds of burial linens and spices and placed in a borrowed tomb. A large stone was rolled over the entrance to the tomb and a guard was posted to ensure that the body of Jesus was not accessible to anyone.

Third Paul says Jesus resurrected from death. It is this fact that distinguishes Jesus from every other person who has ever died.

Fourth Paul says that after rising from death Jesus appeared to eyewitnesses. This included not only Jesus' friends such as Peter and the other disciples who saw the crucifixion scars on his body, but crowds of more than 500 people at a time.

Jesus' own family also saw him risen from death, which compelled his brothers James and Jude to worship their brother as God, become pastors, and write accounts of his life that became books in the New Testament of the Bible.

Paul had been an ardent persecutor of Christians; he hated Jesus and his followers. He was infamous for the public murder of an early Christian leader named Stephen.

But Paul saw Jesus risen from death, and he was so convinced that Jesus was God that he metamorphosed from a murderer of Christians into a Christian pastor.

Ironically, Paul was eventually murdered for teaching that Jesus died to atone for all human sin and rose to conquer death because he, alone among us, is God.

Since the days of Paul, the good news of Jesus' resurrection from death has changed the world.

Jesus has become the most important person in human history. And, because Jesus rose on a Sunday, tomorrow, billions of people around the world will rise out from their beds as he rose out of his tomb to attend church on Easter Sunday and worship Jesus Christ as the only God. Among them will be my son Calvin, because he, too, now knows the most important fact in all of history.

Pastor Mark Driscoll is founder of the nondenominational Mars Hill Church in Ballard. He and four other columnists — the Rev. Patrick J. Howell, Rabbi Mark S. Glickman, the Rev. Patricia L. Hunter and Aziz Junejo — take turns writing for the Faith & Values page. Readers may send feedback to faithpage@seattletimes.com