#RIPJesus or #JesusDied?

I’ve thought about this a bit.

Initially I didn’t want to join in as I was worried about people who aren’t Christian who I know on Twitter getting the wrong end of the stick and also Christians thinking that I’d suddenly lost my faith. It sounds a bit too much like ‘God is Dead’ – the old Nietzsche thing and I was worried that the new atheists might jump on it and use it themselves.

Then I thought I might tweet #RIPJesus as my Salome character as part of #easterLIVE as it would be consistent with her own view of what happened.

Now you’ve made this suggestion I think I would be more comfortable with Tweeting #JesusDied but I’m not sure how much impact it would have as I understand why the #RIPJesus thing was first suggested (copying similar tweets about dead celebrities).

Given this, it might be better just to have #heisrisen or #jesusisalive on Easter Sunday and leave it at that?

It’s a bit complex. This highlights some of the issues I’ve been reflecting on seeing how people have used #easterLIVE. What we don’t want to do is confuse people, we want the message of the resurrection to be loud and clear. We don’t want the message to be lost in the medium. Most of the preaching Peter does in Acts is about Jesus being alive, not about his death. It’s the resurrection that makes our faith mean something, without it, it’s in vain (1 Cor 15:17).

Bryony has hit the nail on the head here. “Jesus died” without any qualification, either that he rose again, or that he died “because…”, isn’t good news at all. Even an atheist believes Jesus is dead.

Wow interesting indeed.

I don’t quite like #RIPJesus as I feel it could be very easily hijacked.Also Jesus was anything but resting once taken down from the cross. I’m torn as there is so much going on though and to point out about the death of Jesus without even getting to Easter Sunday. I find #JesusDied a bit final also although having said that I think it would be great if everyone at 15:00 was to post #ItIsFinished and #WaytoGodOpen. I think I could very easily tie myself in knots here as I can see pro’s and con’s for so many ideas here.

My response was posted here: http://cyber-coenobites.blogspot.com/2011/04/rip-jesus.html