Installment Six of The Faith Once Delivered is the most personal installment — and the most necessary one. Because the people I am asking to examine themselves deserve to see me examine myself first. The zeal that mistakes intensity for discernment. The righteous indignation that becomes its own form of idolatry. The information diet designed to feed and confirm what we already believe.

The people filling Easter baskets on Sunday morning are not pagans.

They are sincere believers who have met the risen Yeshua — sometimes in the middle of those very celebrations. Their faith is genuine. Their love for God is real. And their sincerity is not in question.

You have probably seen the meme. "Easter is really the feast of Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of fertility." It circulates every spring, dressed in scholarly confidence, shared by sincere believers who want to protect the faith. 

She is not a myth. She is not a symbol. She is the oldest and most persistent adversary in the biblical record — older than Babylon, older than Rome, older than the church itself. And the biblical writers do not treat her as a curiosity. They treat her as a catastrophe.

In A.D. 325, a Roman emperor wrote a letter. It was not a theological argument. It was a political decree. And it changed the Christian feast of Passover forever.

He called the Jewish people "that hostile crowd" and declared it "unworthy" for the church to follow their calendar. That single decision — grounded not in scripture but in ethnic contempt — severed the resurrection feast from the Hebrew calendar that gave it its meaning.  

Around A.D. 160, a bishop in Sardis preached the oldest surviving sermon on the resurrection feast. No eggs. No bunnies. No seasonal sentimentality. Just this:

"I am your freedom. I am the Passover of your salvation. I am the lamb slaughtered for you. I am your ransom. I am your life. I am your light. I am your resurrection. I am your king."