Jesus the Liar, Lunatic or Lord
Home > Modern Descriptions of Jesus > Jesus the Liar, Lunatic or Lord
|
Among Pantheists,
like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one
with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since
He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language,
meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely
different than anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will
see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing
that has ever been uttered by human lips...
...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.
From
C.S. Lewis' , "Mere Christianity" Macmillan Publishing Co,
New York, NY. Copyright 1952.
|
|
