ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997 TAG: 9704010018
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
The Easter ideals of sacrifice and service are far removed from the self-centeredness of suicide cults, and can be of great benefit to secular society.
FOR MOST Christians - who, in their various branches, comprise Western Virginia's predominant religious faith - today is a day of celebration.
Like Christmas, the other great Christian holiday, Easter exists in a secular as well as a religious context.
The timing of the holiday, for example, puts its themes of redemption and renewal in harmony not only with the ecclesiastical calendar but also nature's. In the Northern Hemisphere, where Christianity was born and where it grew into a faith of millions, it is spring, when winter's dreariness gives way to new life.
But - bunnies and candy eggs notwithstanding - Easter has proved more resistant than Christmas to the inroads of secularization. On the whole, this resistance is probably a good thing not only for the purity of religious belief but also for the health of secular society.
The grisly events in a Southern California mansion this past week, Christianity's Holy Week, are a particularly bizarre example, of course. Still, they serve as a reminder of what can happen when religious faith is turned into a grotesque caricature of itself.
The theology of Heaven's Gate is murky. But the 39 people who committed suicide apparently believed that by shedding their earthly "containers" they would ascend to a higher plane of existence. The timing of the mass suicide seems to have been linked to comet Hale-Bopp, and the group's belief that a UFO traveling in its wake was a rendezvous point of some sort.
The timing may also have been linked to Easter. In any case, the belief system of the cult does seem to bear a resemblance to the Christian story of death and resurrection.
That resemblance, however, is no more than superficial. In interpreting the Easter story, the several traditions of Christianity, and individual Christians within those traditions, may differ on some of the details. But we know of none that, say, posits UFOs as part of it. And the accounts in the Christian gospels of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, of his arrest by Roman authorities, of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection show him accepting the will of the Father, not committing suicide so as to ensure his own immortality.
Central, in other words, are the ideas of self-sacrifice and service. Those are ideals largely if not utterly absent from suicide cults. They reflect principles that, when put into practice by people of faith, can be of immense value to secular society.
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