Celebrating the resurrection is not a compromise with paganism, and Scripture gives a way to tell the difference that does not depend on winning a history argument. In the Bible, idolatry means giving worship to something other than the Creator. Eating, feasting and setting aside a day are not the problem. What matters is who the act is directed toward. This study traces that distinction through Paul’s letters. Then it turns the question on the reader: once the holiday is cleared, what does your own heart bow to?
You can work through this alone in about an hour, or split it across two group sessions, with Paul’s argument in the first and the practice and discussion in the second. Keep a Bible open. Each section begins with a short observation task. Do it before reading the explanation, because the point is to see the text for yourself first.
Start with what the worry protects
The worry about Easter deserves a fair hearing. Lisa Fields acknowledges that “there are people who have genuine questions and concerns about their faith being mixed with paganism.” That concern has biblical roots. John ends his first letter with a plain command: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.” (1 John 5:21). A Christian who asks whether a holiday crosses that line is asking a responsible question.
The history has been examined elsewhere. R.L. Solberg reports that he found no historical or religious link between Easter and the goddess Ishtar. He also reports that the English word Easter probably came from the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, while the celebration itself is centuries older than that word. Those findings tell us where a name came from. They cannot tell us what makes an act worship. For that, we have to read Scripture.
Paul at the meat market
Observe first. Read 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 and 10:14-33. Mark each place where Paul permits something and each place where he forbids something. Next to each mark, note where the action happens and who could be harmed by it.
The Corinthians faced a version of our question with higher stakes. Some of the meat in their city had been offered in sacrifice to idols. The text says so repeatedly (8:1, 10:19, 10:28). Was eating it a form of idol worship? Paul’s answer has two parts, and they have to be held together.
First, he declares the idol empty: “we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4). So the food carries no spiritual contamination. He says the same thing in practical terms: “Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake” (1 Corinthians 10:25). “Shambles” is old English for the meat market. Paul then grounds his permission in creation itself, quoting the psalm that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (10:26).
Second, he draws a hard line, and he draws it somewhere else: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils” (1 Corinthians 10:21). In the verse just before, Paul says that what is sacrificed to idols is offered to demons and not to God. The danger is real, then, and it is located in participation. Joining the sacrificial meal joins the worship.
Notice what this does to the question. The same cut of meat could be eaten at a family table without sin or eaten at a temple table as an act of devotion. The difference lay in where the act was directed. Paul adds a third consideration. If someone at the table points out that the meat was sacrificed, the believer should decline it for that person’s sake (10:28-29). Freedom is real, but love can limit it.
What the text calls worship
Observe first. Read Romans 1:18-25. Find the verb that describes what people did with the truth, and the word that describes what they served.
Paul’s description of idolatry centers on an exchange: they “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 1:25). In context, Paul is describing a whole human pattern rather than one festival. Its core is clear. Idolatry gives the honor that belongs to the Creator to something he made.
Solberg’s definition of paganism follows the same line. In explaining the term, he says, “I’m referring to the general belief system in which the worshiper is worshiping creation.” Lisa Fields offers a working description of the same idea that fits a modern setting: “giving godlike characteristics to the things that God created.” By this measure, the question is never whether an object or season exists. The question is whether something created is being treated as God.
From there Solberg distinguishes celebration from worship. Celebration, as he describes it, is public rejoicing over a person or event, as at a wedding or a birthday party, where nobody worships the guest of honor. Worship is the devotion of heart and mind. Of that devotion he says, “It’s what you do to God, but it’s not what you do to the Easter Bunny.” In Paul’s terms, a church egg hunt after a service of Scripture and gospel looks more like the meat market than the temple table. Solberg calls that arrangement “that’s an example of having your priorities in the right order.”
A caution belongs here. Paul never mentions Easter. Applying 1 Corinthians 10 to an egg hunt is a reasonable application of his principle, not something the text says directly. Jude 3 Project draws a similar line in another setting. With practices such as burning sage or keeping crystals, the line is intent, not the object.
The strongest objection: Deuteronomy 12
Observe first. Read Deuteronomy 12:29-32. Write down, in your own words, exactly what Israel is told not to do.
Christians who decline to keep Easter often turn here, and they read the passage seriously. As Israel entered the land, God warned them not to ask how the nations served their gods so that they could serve the LORD the same way. He forbade borrowed worship. On this reading, any custom with pagan ancestry should be kept away from Christian devotion, whatever a modern participant intends.
The passage deserves that weight. Look closely at its target, though. It forbids copying the way other nations served their gods. If a Christian custom really had begun as a rite of another god, this text would press hard. So the reading turns on a question of fact: was the practice ever worship of another god? This is where Solberg’s historical work bears on interpretation. It is also where his warning about anachronism matters. He cautions against reading today’s meanings of symbols back into older periods, when those connections were not being made.
Scripture also leaves room for believers to differ on days. “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.” (Romans 14:5-6). Paul also warns against letting others judge believers over feasts and holy days: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” (Colossians 2:16-17).
Solberg points out that Scripture does not command a yearly resurrection feast. What Jesus did command was the remembrance of his body and blood. Solberg says of that command, “We remember his sacrifice. He told us to do that.” Paul says the Supper itself proclaims the Lord’s death: “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” (1 Corinthians 11:26). A believer who skips Easter and keeps the Supper has not disobeyed Scripture. A believer who keeps Easter, in Solberg’s view, is doing what comes naturally: “it’s the natural expression of people who are grateful for their salvation in Christ.”
Practice: read your own observance the way Paul read Corinth
This exercise takes about twenty minutes. Make three columns on a page.
- In the first column, list every element of how you usually mark Easter: services, meals, clothes, baskets, photos, travel, anything else that fills the day.
- In the second column, answer Paul’s question for each element. Is this a meal at the market, ordinary and received with thanks, or a seat at a table, an act directed toward something as if it were God? Most items will be ordinary. Be honest about any that are not.
- In the third column, answer Solberg’s question. He calls the feast “a past looking holiday,” one that looks back to an event. Does this element point back to the empty tomb, sit beside it neutrally, or crowd it out?
Then circle one item that crowds the resurrection out. The test is not whether the item is pagan. It is whether you would notice its absence more than you would notice the absence of Christ.
Groups can add a second step. In pairs, one person restates the abstaining reading of Deuteronomy 12 as fairly as possible, until the other agrees it sounds like something a thoughtful believer would actually hold. Only then may the second person respond. Then switch, using Paul’s reasoning in 1 Corinthians 10.
Where idolatry actually lives
Observe first. Read Colossians 3:1-5. Find the item in Paul’s list that he identifies with idolatry.
The answer is striking: “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:” (Colossians 3:5). “Concupiscence” means strong craving. Paul names a desire, not a statue. In context he has just told these believers to set their minds on things above, where Christ is (3:1-2). So the opposite of idolatry is a mind set on the risen Christ. A cleaner calendar does not fix it.
Solberg makes a similar point in plain speech. “I think worship creeps in,” he says, and adds that “every human being worships something.” His conclusion follows: “It’s what you worship that we need to be mindful of.” He offers an example from his own interests as a football fan, observing that “people are basically worshiping their team.” The point lands on all of us. The danger he sees is less in the bunnies than in a holiday kept with no thought of Christ.
Lisa Fields gives a way to respond when the holiday is commercialized and emptied. She says “the counterfeit shouldn’t push you away, but it should actually cause you to investigate, to find out what is the authentic way this should be practiced.” A hollow version of Easter is not a reason to abandon the real one. It is a reason to find out what the real one is for.
What the real one is for is an event. Paul stakes everything on it: “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Jude 3 teaches that Jesus rose bodily from the dead in space and time, and that this is the hinge on which the Christian faith turns. Celebration that looks back to that tomb is worship of the Creator. Anything that takes its place, however ordinary, deserves a second look.
Questions for discussion
- In 1 Corinthians 10, the same food is allowed in one setting and forbidden in another. In your own words, what changes between the two settings?
- Paul tells believers to decline meat for the sake of someone else’s conscience. When, if ever, should a Christian adjust an Easter custom out of love for another believer?
- Restate the case from Deuteronomy 12 for not observing Easter as its best defender would. What fact would have to be true for that case to succeed?
- Romans 14 says each person should be fully persuaded in their own mind. How is being persuaded different from simply having a preference?
- Colossians 3:5 calls covetousness idolatry. Which ordinary desires come closest to functioning as worship in your life, at Easter or on any other day?
- If the resurrection did not happen, what would be left of Easter? What does your answer show about where the feast’s meaning comes from?
If you are leading a group, expect people to arrive with different convictions, and some may already abstain from Easter. Give the Deuteronomy restatement exercise real time so no one leaves feeling caricatured. Keep personal answers to question 5 optional. People can learn as much by listening as by speaking.
Something to carry into the week
Solberg’s advice to anyone troubled by the customs is simple: “clear away all that clutter, all that cultural stuff, and get to the very point of why Christians celebrate Easter or Resurrection Sunday.” Take the item you circled in the practice and decide this week whether to set it aside, move it, or keep it with clearer intent. Then read one Gospel account of the empty tomb from beginning to end. As you read, ask whether the event in that chapter or the thing you circled has more pull on your attention.