The Resurrection in Everyday Life: A Study in Starting Over

There is something both preposterous and sublime in the human capacity to simply begin again. Indeed, the more one contemplates this peculiar ability, the more it appears to be either a cosmic joke or a divine signature—or perhaps both at once, which would be most fitting. For what could be more absurd than the notion that a person, having thoroughly bungled some great endeavor or walked deliberately down a wrong road for years, can simply stop, turn around, and declare "I shall start fresh"? Yet what could be more magnificent?

The modern world, of course, has attempted to explain away this power of beginning again through various mechanical metaphors and materialist doctrines. We are told that human beings, like all things, are merely the product of causes and conditions stretching back in an unbroken chain to the dawn of time. Each thought and action is determined by what came before, as a billiard ball is determined in its course by the force and angle of the cue. The idea that we can truly begin again is, by this account, merely a pleasant illusion—like the impression that the sun goes around the earth or that the stars are tiny lights rather than enormous infernos.

But here we encounter a remarkable fact that shatters all such mechanical theories: the Cross. For in the death and resurrection of Christ, we find not just a moral example or a spiritual metaphor, but the literal breaking and remaking of the chain of causation itself. Here is the ultimate beginning again, written not in philosophical propositions but in blood and glory. The materialist must explain how the very machinery of death—that most inexorable of all natural laws—could be reversed. The determinist must account for how the accumulated weight of all human sin and error could be, in a moment, undone.

This points to something crucial about human nature that our modern philosophies often miss entirely. We are creatures who exist simultaneously in two realms—the realm of nature, where indeed we are shaped by countless forces beyond our control, and the realm of will and spirit, where we possess a strange kind of freedom that seems to defy natural law. And it was precisely these two realms that met and married on Calvary. For Christ's sacrifice was both utterly natural—involving real flesh, real blood, real death—and utterly supernatural, reaching beyond the boundaries of nature to make all things new.

Consider how this plays out in practice. When a man decides to begin again—whether in matters great or small—he is not merely rearranging the furniture of his psyche or adjusting his social circumstances. He is participating, however dimly, in that great cosmic beginning-again that occurred when death itself was defeated and the new creation dawned. This is why genuine conversion and renewal always has about it something of both Calvary and Resurrection—both a dying to what was and a rising to what might be.

This is why, I suspect, almost all the great stories of beginning again have about them an air of both tragedy and triumph. Take the prodigal son, that archetype of all new beginnings. His return required both a kind of death (to his pride, his independence, his former life) and a kind of resurrection (to new life in his father's house). This pattern appears everywhere because it reflects the central pattern of reality itself—the pattern established when Christ made the ultimate new beginning possible through His own death and resurrection.

But here we begin to touch upon what I believe is the deepest truth about this strange power of beginning again: it points beyond itself to something even stranger. For if we examine carefully this capacity we possess—this ability to die to an old life and rise to a new one—we find it cannot be explained merely by reference to nature itself. It is, in fact, rather like finding a letter written in a language that resembles no earthly tongue. The most reasonable conclusion is that it came from somewhere else.

In other words, our very ability to begin again is a reflection of that divine power that raised Christ from the dead. We possess, however dimly, a spark of that supernatural life that can transform death into life, endings into beginnings. This is not to say we possess this power in anything like the same degree as Christ—we remain very much creatures, not creators. But we have enough of it to make our choices real and our capacity for new beginnings genuine.

This has immense implications for how we understand both human nature and the possibility of redemption. The materialist must eventually conclude that all talk of "starting over" is mere self-deception—that we remain always prisoners of our past and our programming. The purely naturalistic universe has no room for genuine novelty or free choice. But if we are indeed creatures made in the image of a God who raised Christ from the dead, then our small acts of starting over participate in something cosmic and eternal.

This brings us to what is perhaps the most startling aspect of this whole matter: the suggestion that God Himself is, in some mysterious way, the God of new beginnings. The Christian story is, after all, fundamentally about the possibility of starting over—not just individually but cosmically. It declares that even after humanity had wandered down every wrong road and exhausted every false start, God Himself entered history not merely to show us the way back but to become the way back. The Cross is, seen in this light, the ultimate divine affirmation of our strange power to start over, written in the very blood of God.

Note well: this affirmation comes not in the form of an abstract philosophical proposition but in the form of a broken body and an empty tomb. This too is significant. For the power of beginning again is not finally about ideas or principles but about the mystery of death and resurrection—that peculiar pattern of reality that makes new life possible precisely through the surrender of old life. It is persons who can begin again, precisely because persons can participate in this paschal mystery of dying and rising with Christ.

This is why any attempt to reduce the power of beginning again to a mere psychological mechanism or social construct ultimately fails to capture its essence. It is rather like trying to explain the resurrection purely in terms of group psychology. While there are certainly psychological and social dimensions to starting over, its deepest reality lies in that mysterious center where our small deaths and resurrections intersect with the death and resurrection of Christ.

And this, finally, is what makes the act of beginning again both absurd and magnificent. It is absurd because it involves a kind of impossibility—the impossibility of truly starting fresh when we remain always who and what we are, shaped by all that has come before. Yet it is magnificent precisely because it manifests a power that transcends natural necessity and points to the supernatural reality revealed on Resurrection morning.

So let us not be ashamed either of the absurdity or the magnificence of our perpetual beginnings again. They are, after all, the signature of our peculiar status as creatures made in the image of a God who specializes in raising the dead and making all things new. When we exercise this strange power—whether in small daily choices or in life-altering decisions—we participate in something both human and divine, both tragic and triumphant. We act out, in our small way, the great drama of crucifixion and resurrection.

For this is the strange romance of starting over: that in our very ability to begin again we discover not just who we truly are, but whose death and resurrection we share. And that is neither absurd nor magnificent, but both at once—which is, after all, the deepest truth about everything that really matters.

 -The Seeker's Quill