So, there’s this really awesome quote by C. S. Lewis that I really want to share. You may have read it before. Maybe not.
“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 a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool 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.”
- C. S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity
I found myself thinking about this quote last night. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Jesus really didn’t give us the opportunity to shrug him off. When you hear his story, you’re automatically presented with these three options.
But I want to pick at it a little. Because… as wonderful a thought as it is, it can be taken even further. One could object to the statement and say that perhaps the apostles invented this idea that Jesus was the Son of God. Maybe they made it up. But if you really think about it, that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?
At the time the gospels were written, the Jews were under the authority of the Roman Empire. At the time, Caesar was the ‘Son of God’. Caesar was the ‘Savior of the World’. People were expected to bow down and worship him. To refuse to do this, and what’s more, to point to some other person and say they are the Son of God, wasn’t just an unpopular thing to do in their day. It was a crime. People were crucified for saying the things the apostles were saying. So in what universe does it make sense that they would make it up?
If we continue in this train of thought, though, we find all these other Christians as well, who were being converted on a daily basis. For every one Rome stamped out, another five would pop up. As the old quote says, ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church’ (Tertullian). But why would so many people find themselves willing to believe and avow something that would end up getting them killed? I find it unlikely that so many people were just crazy or stupid or liars.
And then along comes Paul on his road to Damascus. He’s travelling along to go arrest and persecute Christians in the city when he’s approached by a vision of Jesus that leaves him blind for three days. I find myself wondering what it must have been like to be Paul at that exact moment. To be so suddenly and magnificently caught in your sin. And yet to also accept Christ and be so freely forgiven. I suppose we all experience these feelings, but… wow.
Anyway, the point is, something happened to Paul on his way to Damascus that changed his life forever. And it wasn’t because he was trying to deceive anyone and it wasn’t because he was simple-minded. I mean, this is Saint Paul we’re talking about. The author of the Pauline Epistles, some of the most thoroughly examined and relied-upon texts in the scriptures. Possibly–probably– the greatest theologian of all time. And, like the others, he didn’t choose his path because it was easy or popular or anything of the like. He constantly found himself in prison and ended up being beheaded.
So what was going on with all these people? Why were so many willing to sacrifice their lives and even the lives of their families? And what about Jesus? What are the possible explanations for his radical claims? What exactly went on in the first century?
It seems the most logical answer that Jesus was precisely who he claimed to be. And it seems most logical that the disciples were telling everyone precisely what they themselves had witnessed. And it seems most logical that the people at that time were confronted with the Truth. And these people were completely and totally transformed by the grace of God through Jesus of Nazareth.
- Amanda
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