Sing Alleluia at Easter

The 'Thinking Anew' column in The Irish Times on Saturday.

Michael Commane

Channel Four, which is the UK's only public-owned, commercially-funded public service broadcaster, screens an hour-long news every weekday evening, which offers a comprehensive and detailed analysis and commentary on world and UK affairs.The 7pm programme is always well-worth watching.

Last week it aired its “sting” on the data company Cambridge Analytica. This involved an undercover journalist in conversation with Cambridge Analytica staff. He was purporting to seek help in an upcoming election in Sri Lanka. It was sensational television. It certainly stopped me in my step. One had no choice but to watch it.

As a result of Channel Four's brilliant and intrepid investigation, in partnership with the British Sunday newspaper The Observer,  the world has been agog with the shenanigans that's been going on in data companies

Words such as algorithms and data are part of the basic language of mathematicians. For the rest of us we have some superficial and fleeting understanding that they have something to do with the smart phones and computers we use on a daily basis.

IT or  information technology is now an essential ingredient in every aspect of our lives. Our trains, newspapers, car manufacturing, the harvesting of crops, everything has an IT component to it.

We marvel at the technology. Only last week I renewed my car tax online. The thought of going to a county council office, queueing maybe for 30 minutes, to get a tax disk brings back nightmares. It is laughable to look back at what we did. Instead with a few clicks, some money and a bank card we can do in less than five minutes what in the past could well have taken an entire morning. And the frustration and frayed nerves involved are now a distant memory.

It's easy to be tempted to say we are masters of the human race and everything is forced to bow down in front of our supremacy. At the press of a button we can do all things.

And yet right in front of our eyes modern-style highwaymen have committed daylight robbery. They have snatched data on millions of people. We who know so much, who think the world is at our fingertips have been made fools of. Every time we use our IT devices there is the possibility that someone is watching and then harvesting our data and in turn using it or selling it on so that they can in some magical way use it to influence us in how we think and act.

It is astonishing and mesmerising.

Tomorrow is the feast of Easter, the most important day in the Christian calendar. Christians give expression to their belief in the risen Lord.

In tomorrow's Gospel (Jn 20: 1 - 9) John tells us how the disciples run to the tomb, Peter and the one Jesus loved, and they find the tomb empty. It is Mary of Magdala who spots that the tomb is open and brings it to the attention of the disciples.

Astonishing. Hard to believe. But it is the very kernel of our faith. It has been passed down to us over two thousand years. 

While there is no witness to his actual coming forth from the tomb there are many who gave their lives in testimony to the fact that they had seen him alive. There is historical evidence to back it up. St Paul says: "If Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless". (1 Corinthians 15:14)

In the midst of everything I see and experience in this whimsical world around me, the idea of the raising of Jesus and then the possibility of my resurrection, give me great hope in the purpose of my life. Resurrection offers us a profound steadiness, a powerful goal to achieve.

Maybe today more than ever it is unwise to put all our trust in the inventions, works and schemes of human beings. There is more to us that that. Shakespeare prods us to thinking so when we read in Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

A God-centred world seems far more attractive right now than one which places all reality under the control of women and men.

Surely it is astonishingly arrogant to dismiss the resurrection story as fairytale material at a time when we have been made fools of right in front of our eyes? We are being told fairytales every day of our lives.

Tomorrow is a day to sing Alleluia, the Lord is risen, and we believe we too are destined to share in the glory of the risen Lord.