ALT-3 Chocolate Jesus for Easter Blessing or Blasphemy
With all of the commercialization that now comes along with Easter, the Easter Bunny, Chocolate Easter rabbits, duckies and chicks and marshmallow peeps, and jelly beans and colored eggs and the list goes on and on- but as a Christian, when my children were younger, I wanted them to know the real meaning of Easter.
It's a tough time for Christians. Our traditional worship celebrations have been taken over by main stream society. We want our children to know what we believe, and to learn about our faith, while at the same time we feel pressured to go along with the main stream, lest our children later feel that they missed out on important child-hood memories.
Our family did not do "Easter bunny" we did do the "Mommy Bunny" however. In this way my children were able to receive "Easter baskets" (like all of their friends) and to participate in our family Easter Egg hunt, without ever having been lied to. I explained to them that many of their friends believed it was the "Easter bunny" who hid the eggs and left the baskets, but it was just mommy's and daddy's playing tricks on their kids. I let them know they were in on the big joke, and it was up to their friends mommy's and daddy's, if they wanted to tell their children about the joke. "In our family, we want to make sure that silly jokes like the Easter bunny don't take away from the real meaning of Easter. For some people they do." I told them.
My children got Easter baskets every year. They were not quite like the ones their friends got, however. Each year they got a new Bible, pencils from the Christian book store, new games that were related to our faith (like Scriptionary,Bible-opoly, and Catch-the-Church-Mouse.) I bought chocolate crosses, a few years ago, when they first came out. I remember being happy that there was something in the Easter aisle at our local store, that reflected Christianity.
A chocolate Jesus. I haven't seen one yet, but I can think of several reasons why, if my children were still of the "Easter basket" age, I would probably buy several of them:1. Because it makes more sense, at Easter time, then chocolate rabbits, and marshmallow peeps.2. Because it may provoke questions about Jesus, and give one the opportunity to talk about Him on Easter, instead of the rabbits, and the baskets and the chocolates. I can see how putting a chocolate Jesus in a child's basket, who is from a non-worshiping family, could give present a very good opportunity to talk about the Lord.3. Because the world is full of such horrendous sin that I just can't see God as worrying about whether or not a chocolate is shaped like Jesus.
The Apostle Paul wrote something interesting about sin. There were those in the early church who were upset about Christians eating foods that had been offered to idols. Paul's response to the Corinthians reads "Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do."* see 1 Corinthians 8:7,8
