Why do we eat hot cross buns at Easter?
What are the chocolate eggs all about?
Is it true that Easter originated as a pagan celebration?
My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and current President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.
Today we talked about Easter and asked whether it’s a time of religious significance or just a great excuse for a four day holiday.
One of the interesting things that came out of our conversation was the idea that we can celebrate not only the sacrifice that bought our freedom 2000 years ago but that we can live it out by demanding freedom for all. Ross talked about the modern slavery and human trafficking. There are more people in slavery today than at any other time in history.
If you want to do something about ensuring the freedom of all humanity you can visit the Stop the Traffik to learn more and find out how you can do your bit.
Will the Easter eggs you buy for your children be made with cocoa beans grown and harvested with West African slave labour? Your choices can make a difference.
This Easter will you be celebrating only what Jesus did for you or will you be doing your best to extend that forgiveness and freedom to ‘the least of these’?
You can hear our conversation by left clicking here or you could right click here to save the mp3 and listen later.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
Technorati Tags: Easter – Slavery – Radio
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Rodney, Stop the Traffik has done a great thing. The group was brought to my attention by some Jewish friends, who of course celebrate their freedom from slavery during this season. I don’t know why I haven’t posted about it, but now I will! Thanks for the reminder.
Hey Rodney, at work we’re selling chocolate lambs for easter. They come in a gift box, and explain ‘why the lamb’. I think there’s a website – http://www.whythelamb.com.au if that doesn’t work, a google search should find the correct site.
While I agree with most of your post – and certainly the sentiments, I would question the comment about Jesus’s sacrifice giving freedom to us all.
I was under the impression that Jesus was reluctantly killed by a cornered politician for starting a political movement that looked like it might actually put the ruling government at risk… but then you add a couple of thousand years worth of romanticism and re-writes, and we end up with the story we have all been taught at school.
You could argue that Oscar Schindler or Anne Frank will have just as significant legacy given enough time.
The interesting thing about the romanticism and re-writes is that there are early copies of what is now regarded as the Christian scriptures that can be dated to very soon after the event and they are almost identical to the writings we have now.
Therefore, the ‘re-writes’ couldn’t have happened over two thousand years. If there were any re-writes, they happened while there were still eye witnesses to the events alive. Wouldn’t they have done something about it back then if that was the case?