The irony—it burns!

April 5, 2012 • 12:41 pm

At first glance this column by pastor Mark Driscoll, pointed out by alert reader Amelie, seems like a joke, but it’s real!  From the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” section, it’s called “What we tell our kids about the Easter Bunny.”  Here’s the highlight:

So, I thought I’d take a moment to share how we do at the Driscoll house.

Just like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny is a hallmark of American culture. So, unless you live in a commune, you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist and that it’s not a significant part of our cultural observance of the holiday.

My wife, Grace, and I choose to tell our five kids that the Easter Bunny, while fun, isn’t a real, magical bunny that hops from house to house laying colored eggs, candies, and toys on Easter morning. That’s a make-believe story, and we have no objections to fun and imagination so long as the kids also know that the Resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact and not a fanciful myth. With the overt commercialization that comes along with the Easter Bunny, and consequently Easter, as parents we don’t want to lose sight of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But wait! There’s more:

As with many things, we redeem the idea of the Easter Bunny. We tell our kids that the Easter Bunny is a make-believe character from a non-Christian holiday. We tell them that years ago in Germany children would build a nest for the “Easter hare” to lay her eggs in, and that it wasn’t until Germans immigrated to the United States that this tradition was widely accepted and practiced here. We stress that Easter is a time for us to remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but that the Easter Bunny is a make-believe character who has been adopted as the official Easter mascot.

I’ll use a theological argument here and say that these paragraphs are so improbably crazy that they must describe the real situation in the Driscoll home.

98 thoughts on “The irony—it burns!”

    1. Can you get chocolate Jesodes?

      And does the chocolate turn into the body of Christ if you’re a Roman Catholic?

      /@

      1. Yuck! That’d be a compelling reason to leave the church, if the pedophiles were not enough.

  2. Magical bunny delivering candy: fanciful story, just for fun

    Magical human coming back to life after being crucified: totally happened, man!

      1. thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        Have you met my rubber chicken?

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        Ah, I see you have.

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        What’s that?

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my rubber chicken thwacking you!

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        I know, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        She gets like this at times. The vet says she’s allergic to puns.

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        What the vet’s allergies have to do with my rubber chicken’s thwackitude is udderly beyond me.

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        Hey! Stop that!

        thwackthackthwackthwackthwack

        b&

        1. I’m told that one shouldn’t beat one’s rubber chicken in polite society. Even Pee-wee Herman learned that thou shall not thwack it in public.

          Otherwise, +0!

  4. Nonsense! Easter is the Spring fertility festival where we commemorate when the Great Chocolate Easter Bunny had his ears bitten off for our sins. I always celebrate by throwing colored eggs at churches.

  5. You have to wonder what the edtiors at Washington Post are doing if they’re not looking out for this type of “historical fact”.

    Finding out that your beloved Christian holiday is based on a fertile Germanic goddess…..ouch. 😉

  6. AHAHA!

    Magical bunnies who do nice things for people are make-believe.

    Magical zombies who want you to come live with them in their magical empire in the sky, and do nice things for you for all eternity are entirely real.

    See the difference, kids?

    2. The Easter Bunny is more credible since, for a time, the Easter Bunny actually left me tangible things that I could eat. I’ve never seen this empire in the sky, on the other hand.

    3. Uhm – guys? Vampire. Obviously. His followers don’t eat his brain, they drink his blood.
      (And eat a bit of his flesh, admittedly, but still…)

  7. We don’t have to argue here, we can come up with a synthesis. How about if we have Jesus hop from house to house on the Saturday when he isn’t doing anything anyway, deliver the choconoms and still be ready to pop out of the rabbit hole on the Sunday.

    Sorted.

    Lately I’ve been thinking of some syncretic superstition aids. What if we combine the various powers. How about a Lucky Jesus foot for my keys so I don’t lose them again?

    If I word the ad just right, the adbot will put it up on the Christian sites.

    1. I think you’ll do better with a Lucky Jesus foreskin, there seem to be a lot more of them out there than Jesus feet.

          1. You’re right. I think it might also have something to do with the fact that it’s only the unluckiest of the Jesopodes that get their feet whacked off and turned into novelty keychains. Same goes for the lagomorphs, curiously enough…

            b&

  8. My kids were told by a nutty Christian teacher in their UK primary school that the reason we eat eggs at Easter is that the rock that was rolled in front of Christ’s tomb was egg-shaped. Honest!

          3. Where did you get that fine counter-cultural reference? I thought you lived in a cave…

  9. There must be a grain of truth to the Easter Bunny. People couldn’t have just made up such an historically significant being.

    1. You of all people should know!

      So, what was he? Something like your fourth great-great grand uncle three times removed?

      b&

      1. My momma always told me stories about great great great grandma Esther Bunny. It wasn’t her eggs that were colored, but you know how the patriarchal white rabbits distort the truth in their favor.

    2. Why did the people that lived with the Easter Bunny claim to have seen Him leaving chocolate eggs even when it cost them their lives????? If it was in fact a lie, why would they all die for it? that’s insane…

      (comment from the WP article with a bit of search and replace, strictly to make it more credible)

    3. And by the criterion of embarrassment it must be true: Noöne seeking to be believed would make up so ridiculous a creature as a hare laying eggs – certum est, quia impossibile.

      Now for multiple attestations.

  10. I want to believe that the Driscoll Way of explaining the Easter Bunny will turn the kids into atheists, just as soon as they get old enough to reason. Like, maybe, tomorrow?

  12. Sadly, this is one of the least insane things that Pastor Mark has said. We are talking about a guy who claimed in the NYT that liberal Christians worshipped “Queer Jesus”. At least this is just kinda funny.

    1. Well, that part’s true.

      Think about it. An observant first century Jew should have been married at age 13 and had a few dozen kids to help around the carpentry shop by the age of 33.

      But here’s Jesus, not only unmarried, but whose followers are almost exclusively other unmarried Jewish men (and a “beard” in Mary Magdalene). And there’s that phrase to Peter, “I will make you fishers of men.” Hmmm…

      I’ll bet he was buff, too. Rock hard abs and a steely blue gaze.

  13. I agree with Su – I would buy chocolate Jesus if Cadbury decided to switch myths. The demise of the mythical Easter Bunny was actually my first clue that “God” was probably not real either. Yay for the Easter Bunny of truth!

    1. I remember finding out that Easter is set as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. I tell xtians this and it doesn’t phase them at all. I mean, really? After the first full moon after the equinox? Sounds like pagans – or, oh no! witches!!!! to me.

      Which gives me the idea to celebrate by reading passages from Good and Evil.

      1. Actually, as I like to remind people, he scheduling of Easter is just the last vestige of the Jewish lunar calendar left in Christianity.

      1. Chocolate Jesus would be so much better than that crappy wafer: “Hey, look at me! I’m transubstantiatin’!”

    3. You can get a chocolate Jesus, somewhere at least. There’s a book, “What do you do with a chocolate Jesus?: An irreverent history of Christianity” Apparently the author found one at some sort of revival meeting, he thought eating it was somehow inappropriate.

  14. So apparently the Germans were all pagans in the 18th century. I didn’t know that.

    1. Ever heard of Christmas Trees?

      Taking in an evergreen in rite to celebrate the reborn Sun? Germans did that.

    2. German Christianity is infused with massive pagan influences – and I guess the same is true for other places of the world, probably to ease the adaption of christianity for the people it was largely forced upon. Many native gods where made saints. The Story of St. Martin, for example, is basically a redress of old Odinic myths, with Martin taking the place of Wotan/Woden/Odin.

      Other saints are revered for their sacrilegious behavior. St. Boniface, who cut down Thor’s oak near Geismar while under the protection of frankish troops (probably the moral equivalent of burning down a church) is a top tier saint in the more southern parts. The Frisians put an belated end to him. Thanks to them, he is considered to me a martyr nowadays.

      Central and northern european christianity is basically a collection of pagan rites with a Jesus sticker on it.

      1. *”to BE a martyr nowadays” – while it’s not the worst thing I did to the english language in that post, it’s probably among the more hilarious ones.

  15. Bunnies laying eggs. Sounds like creationist science to me. Driscoll should like it.

  17. I can’t wait to hear about how they explain the “Christmas” tree, wreaths, and Santa Claus.

  18. Doesn’t PZ have a regular feature where people write ‘Why I am an Apasqualapinist?

  19. Wait, r we talking about the bunny from Donny Darko? Cos that 1 still gives me the creeps,…

  20. Maybe Driscoll can help me with Easter. Last year I crucified my bunny on Good Friday and made sure it was buried before sundown. I got up before sunrise on Easter. The bunny? Still dead and buried. Religion is horribly confusing.

    Resurrecshun, I’m doin it rong.

  21. I wonder if he gives his kids chocolate crosses to eat while hearing his clarifying explanation.

    1. Indeed! That might explain the cognitive dissonance demonstrated so clearly by these people. A functional corpus callosumectomy!

  23. Somehow he leaves out that the Easter bunny was a bird whose wing was trapped in ice b/c the spring goddess, Eostre, had returned late. She felt bad and freed the bird by turning her into a rabbit (or hare?) Thereafter the bird left eggs (apparently, as a rabbit it still laid eggs) every equinox as a thanks to the goddess. Probably didn’t want to get into, some gods are real and some are make believe…

  24. If you want to see how a religion could start, if you want to see the beginning of a new branch of apologetics then check out Mass Effect Three’s indoctrination theory.

    For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue8z3UL4mmk

    Listen to what he is saying, examine the evidence. Weep for humanity.

    I am not really saying that this is the start of a religion but I bet that there are many similarities.

    They want to believe because they want to believe.

    They say things that are demonstrably false, but they really believe them.

    There are kudos for coming up with a new thing that doesn’t make sense in the game. (The assumption is that if something in the game doesn’t make sense then it has been deliberately been put there by the developers as a clue for the Indoctrination Theory).

    You can see the social aspect and the community aspects coming into play.

    Maybe this is something for someone who wants to study the psychology of religion and apologetics.

    1. Check out the comments to the video and see the participants trying to come up with new evidence or drop in old evidences just so they can be a part of the movement.

      Wishful thinking and confirmation bias has gone rampant.

  26. What is the real origin of the Easter Bunny? Who used to celebrate the Spring with rabbits as fertility symbols? Who with eggs? When and where did they get merged?

    I don’t trust this guy’s version, for obvious reasons.

      1. Well, I’m not able to find litchik’s version of the myth. But eggs and rabbits were both fertility symbols, and apparently Eoster sometimes took the form of a rabbit.

  28. The eggs and the bunny probably merged in that they are both symbols of fertility, not that they necessarily had anything to do directly with each other. You know, the world egg and all that.

  29. lolz. I watch alot of Driscoll’s sermons online and he’s awesome! He equates the practice of yoga to devil worship! He also once gave a sermon where he claims to be able to have psychic abilities.

    Another awesome dude to listen to is Francis Chan. lolz.

  30. Then there’s Bill Hicks “I was over in Australia during Easter, which was really interesting. You know, they celebrate Easter the exact same way we do, commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children that a giant bunny rabbit … left chocolate eggs in the night. Now … I wonder why we’re fucked up as a race. I’ve read the Bible. I can’t find the word “bunny” or “chocolate” anywhere in the fucking book.” And I’m still waiting for something to be said of dinosaurs.

    1. Yes we do, and it’s even more confused because it’s autumn (fall) down here. So we celebrate the harvest with a pagan spring festival including magic bunnies and magic men who pretend to die. On top of that there is a movement to replace the bunny with the native bilby which is endangered and cute and somewhat bunny like, but not at all an appropriate fertility symbol. Soooo confused.

        1. That is an innovative down under approach to settling a religiously confusing and capitalistic (no connection there), holiday. I would say that big ass toad that got imported should be the New Easter Toad (no shortage there eh?), thereby opening up new avenues for industry and job creation… wait, sorry, got carried away there.

  31. I will confess (sheepishly) that that might be the very thing I told my daughter’s when they were growing up. Unfortunately, sadly, it is real. Now that I have grown up and don’t believe in fairy tales, I have told my son that the Easter Bunny is real and that Jesus is a fairy tale. 😉

  32. If anything, I hope those eggs are non-fertilized bunny eggs, because if they are not, they would be, you know, aborted chocolate bunnies. And we all know most churches positions on abortions.

  33. Woooh! I thought that I was a good boy for saying “Cocaine… so that’s what that was ; nice ; no repeat.”
    bUT IF i WERE A Godly (bloody CapsLock key!) person … then I’d have to pretend ..a lot.
    The only reason that I’m shaking my head is that I don’t have rude enough words for the retard in question.

  36. Everybody knows that Easter Sunday is the day that Jesus rolled the stone aside and emerged from his tomb, saw his shadow and we had 6 more weeks of winter (or something like that).

  37. A shame because the first half was a well-considered rebuttal to those who don’t celebrate it on the grounds of its pagan origins.

    I guess he must have opened the Kool Aid after the picture.

  38. In a similar piece about Santa, Driscoll says he is concerned about lying to children, and about the importance of distinguishing fact from fiction. The problem is, he thinks the way we know what’s true is by believing whatever our parents tell us. But of course if Driscoll had happened to have been born in Saudi Arabia, he would be teaching his children that Allah’s revelation to Muhammad is historical fact, while Jesus’s resurrection is a lie.

    I’ve written more about this here…

Comments are closed.