The Psychology of Resurrection by William Klein

The Psychology of Resurrection

I once heard a Buddhist priest remark, “There’s nothing unusual about resurrection. It happens every day. I was resurrected this morning. I was asleep, I woke up and saw the world as it was given to me.” He went on to use a familiar allusion when discussing resurrection, “A seed is taken from some fruit, it is laid in the ground and born anew.” Something good comes from our willingness to be open to new opportunities, and life offers new opportunities daily. This science has a great deal to offer us in realizing being born again.

The priest made it clear that he didn’t believe in an afterlife, but the concept of the psychology of resurrection fascinated me. Although conceptually this may appear easy to understand for some and others may say the significance of resurrection is more complicated, there are poetic metaphors that help us relate to the concept in everyday life.

A friend of mine who is a nun reiterated this for me recently. “Something is happening in the darkness.” She inspired me to see that we are planted here for a reason to allow new life to express itself and grow and alluded to the “parable of the sower” in Matthew 13:

“Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶ But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. ⁷ Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. ⁸ Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred,sixty or thirty times what was sown. (Matthew 13: 5-8.)

Such is the spiritual life. Sometimes the seeds we plant are deep and bear fruit other times we plant in shallow ground and are fruitless. My friend implored me, “Let it happen and watch how it unfolds because it will inform you.” She said, “Don’t look for the grace in a day, it will happen. Just be present to it.” Wisdom. We train our eyes on something for too long we lose focus of the bigger picture. So true. I have a tendency to get caught up in theology and fail to see the art of life. I guess this is the result of living in my head and not allowing the heart to play its role in helping me to see.

The act of dying to yourself is the truest expression of resurrection because it presents itself as new awareness. It is the central message in the calamity of grief. In the darkest times there is a great light present. As we train our eyes on it and adapt to our new understanding, the light will show us something we haven’t seen before. It will open our hearts in ways we never considered. The light of grace will focus our attention on being present to life in a new way.

The example of resurrection is present in life all around us. How might those examples serve us? How can we die to the regrets we harbor? How can we identify with trauma and be resurrected with a new outlook? How can we rise above broken relationships and broker new deals and acceptance that those relationships may have had their time and place or have a new opportunity for growth? How might we move on and see the world with innocence and the eyes of a child while allowing our wisdom to serve the world in greater ways by speaking truth to power? 

No doubt it takes a lot of work to be able to surrender. Good friends and therapy is a good start, but literature can inform us, too. But there is no substitute for experience. The more I press for answers, the more allusive they seem to be. I carry the cross of a problem and fall. I get up and move forward only to fall again. When I am nailed to the cross with a choice that needs to be made, I die to myself and relinquish myself to prayerful contemplation.  When I rest in peace with a problem, the answer tends to arrive.

Some Christians will take exception to this idea of examining resurrection as a tool for psychological growth as it is a hallowed and sacrosanct central tenet of Christianity that Jesus rose from the dead to save the world and free us from sin and death. I don’t think Jesus would object to us examining on a deeper level how his example can serve us in taking up our crosses, dying to self and resurrecting our person with new understanding.

The same passage where Jesus implores his followers to take up their cross in Matthew 16, Jesus speaks of the leaven of the Pharisees. In the chapter before this one, he feeds the four thousand and speaks of what defiles a person and notes the importance of the commandments. The chapter following Matthew 16, Jesus is transfigured. There is a logical connection between the chapters pointing at the evolution of faith and foreshadows the sequence of events that will come during his passion. Matthew is alluding to the process of identifying with the world on the world’s terms, but dying to one’s self and being altered as a result of one’s willingness to die to himself.

How many times have I heard people press for something to happen. You press, and press and nothing happens. In the surrender to the effort, you see the fruits of your work. We are born anew when we look at our lives and cherish the hardship that formed us, dying to our circumstances with awakened new hope. This is resurrection.