(RNS) My first e-mail of the day is from Apple Inc.: “iPad is here!”

Gosh. Better run down to the Apple Store and buy this “magical and revolutionary product” for the “unbelievable price” of $499.

Wait a minute. That’s a lot of money for an over-sized iPhone. Will it actually do anything I need done?

According to lengthy reviews, its main market is consumers of content, not creators of content. That is, people who play games, read newspapers or books or watch videos. It’s not writers, or helping clients, managing data, managing Web sites, or running an enterprise.

Consuming content is part of life, of course, and the iPad apparently handles it well. But if I want to actually create anything, I still need my laptop. To communicate, I still need my smartphone. So now I carry a third tool? To read electronic books?

It took me five minutes to discover that Amazon provides a free app for reading books on the laptop I already own. I do a quick download, purchase an e-book, read a few pages, and realize I just saved $499.

And so it is with Easter. Something truly “magical and revolutionary” happened that first day. It transformed perhaps 120 lives. Those believers told others, and soon a movement began. That movement, in turn, sent evangelists to the far reaches of the world.

It also produced a tragic stream of power struggles, scheming bishops, beheadings and burnings, heresy trials, warfare and pogroms, and now modern church wars for the right to declare other people wrong.

Is this the “gosh” moment of Easter? A pope who chooses doctrinal orthodoxy over accountability for clergy who abuse children? Institutional apologists who rally in his defense by naming him a victim (like Jesus or European Jews), and declare any criticism a sign of anti-Catholic sentiment, not normal standards of accountability?

I don’t think so. That isn’t why Easter occurred.

God didn’t call us to be consumers of religious content or protectors of the institutions that provide them. Christianity — especially Easter Christianity — is about transformation of life.

An Easter Christianity is about people submitting their lives to the love and will of God. It is about receiving and giving mercy. It is about putting down weapons, winning the victory over greed, loving one’s enemies, and joining God’s ceaseless drive for justice and peace.

Christianity, unlike the iPad, is not about consuming content that someone else created. It is about sitting with the blank screen of one’s life and creating something, as best one can, and offering that something to God. It is about dreaming and imagining, working and worrying, serving and loving — making a difference with one’s life.

Faith isn’t something we download to watch or to play. Faith is something we dare to embrace, knowing it will compel us to become a “new creation.”

I think more and more people understand the distinction between consuming and creating. They are seeking out faith communities that expect something of them and encourage them to change and to serve. Brand loyalty means little. Attending, or “consuming,” the occasional special event is less compelling than making, or “creating,” one’s whole life special before God.

Fewer people see Easter faith as bonnets and cantatas, or as institutions defending themselves. Instead, they see Easter as an emptying, a cleansing, and a fresh journey onward, away from death and toward life.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)