The reason that Ben-Hur, the 1959 version with Charlton Heston, is the best movie about Christ ever made is twofold. First, Christ never really appears—just his figure and the effect he had on others—and the magical music theme associated with him. This is important because whatever choice you make about presenting Jesus—like the winning figure of Jesus right now in the series, The Chosen—you are not capturing the uncanny quality of his presence. Nor the mystery of his person and consciousness.

The second reason that Ben-Hur is so great is that it ends on Good Friday. It doesn’t end with the desperation and depth of despair that the followers of Jesus experienced. Rather, in a brilliant twist, the movie symbolizes Easter by showing in the film that the blood of the lamb takes away the sins of the world. That blood heals Judah’s mother and sister and cleanses him. Good Friday contains the Easter triumph within it.

This is perfectly good Christian theology actually.

 But the Gospels do not present the story that way. Good Friday scatters and breaks the followers of Jesus. They wait through the Sabbath, because no activity is permitted then. On Sunday, today, they go to anoint the body in the tomb, in accordance with the Jewish ritual, and the tomb is empty. They flee in terror.

The Gospel of Mark apparently ended right there.

The unbridgeable gap between the believer and the secularist occurs on Easter, with the account of the Resurrection. The Church arises out of the Easter experience. That is a form of resurrection and it obviously happened.

But what was that Easter experience? The secularist has no answer. It was miraculous. Every other Messiah’s career ended in death. Only the followers of Jesus created something like the Church.

Plus, within a short time—just a few years—these committed Jews become convinced that halachic law is no longer binding. It is as if the Taliban started holding cocktail parties in 2040.

The believer believes that Jesus was resurrected in bodily form and spent time with his followers before ascending to heaven. The secularist says this is impossible. That’s all it is. The division cannot be healed. Here there is no sort of data that would decide the issue. Something happened. We don’t know what.

The thing about Judaism is that you can almost have the religion without the miracles and without the personal God. This is not really true, which is why I left, but many Jews manage it.

Not so with Christianity. It is, as C.S. Lewis wrote, one big miracle.

Fortunately, I can still learn from Christianity even without the resurrection. That is what we secularists have to do.