Lord, Liar or Lunatic

I know the good chunk of you that read this blog are Christians, so I'm sure you're probably familiar with C.S. Lewis' proposition from Mere Christianity. In case you aren't, in a nutshell, what he's saying is that with Jesus you have 3 options. Either (1) he really is who he says he is, (2) he's essentially one of the most evil men to walk the face of earth in making the claims that he did, or (3) he's just completely insane and should have been locked away in an insane asylum. I'd heard this argument before, but it recently popped up again. It came up in conversation last week, and then my pastor talked about it on Sunday. And it's just stuck with me for the last few days. As I chew on the idea more and more, I realize how much more profound this is to me now than it was the first time I heard it back in college.

The one thing every person has to grapple with before they die is Jesus. Either you believe he is who he says he is or you don't. Other religions (and non-religious people for that matter) pretty much all come to the conclusion that Jesus was a great prophet or a great human teacher, but not the messiah. But the bottom line is they had to address his existence. I don't have to grapple with who Mohammed was or who Buddha was, so on and so forth. Christians don't define them as prophets or good teachers. We simply define them as heretics or false Gods. If their god was the one true god, then they would have no choice but to label Jesus in the same manner we label their "prophets." But they don't!

The way I see Lewis' idea is really a matter of 2 choices. Jesus is who he says he is or he was just a complete jerk for claiming to be God and leading all of these people to believe that he was the messiah and the only way to heaven. There is absolutely no room for simply concluding that he was a great teacher! So if you don't believe that my Jesus is who he says he is, then don't come at me with your idea that he was simply a great human being because that is just not an option. Either he's the one and only savior or he's not. Deal with it.