Thursday, March 17, 2011

Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

I recently was reminded of C.S. Lewis' quote from Mere Christianity.  I thought it would be useful to post. The interesting thing is that as you read the gospels, Lewis' assessment is very accurate. Jesus could have been crazy or demonic. The 2000+ year affects seem to rule out crazy and simply the here and now benefits of Christianity seem to rule out demonic. So, along with Lewis, I'm left with one viable conclusion: Jesus is Lord.
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 was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the 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 patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. - Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, p54-56
To God Alone be the Glory

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