Thursday, September 10, 2009

Lunatic, Liar or Lord?

There is a famous quote by C.S. Lewis that goes something like this:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Lewis here argues that the claim of Jesus to be "the Son of God" leaves us three options. Either Jesus was a lunatic, a liar, or He really was/is LORD.
After reading the book of John, one thing really sticks out: Jesus asked God to let people see who He really was. He was always complaining that people didn't understand.
So my next question is this: Would a liar publicly ask God to reveal his true identity? It seems that a liar would want to steer people away from his true identity!
So, for me, it seems that I can logically remove this one from the equation. So, is Jesus a lunatic? Or is He truly the Son of the Living God?
Of course, I choose the latter.
So does this mean that I am defined by this equation, too? Either I am a lunatic or really, really smart! I dunno...sometimes I feel like both! I feel like a lunatic who "gets" something that a lot of other people don't get. As long as I'm not a jerk about it, that's OK with me.

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