That's Crazy Talk

Some years ago, this author studied the first 17 chapters of John specifically for this purpose: to determine just how often the Deity of Jesus was spoken of specifically or implied by Him, by a friend, or by an enemy. Of all the verses—over 700 of them—nearly 3 out of every 4 verses was a statement about Him being God. You'd have to be blind not to see it. It's crazy talk.

C.S. Lewis came to this same realization when he said that Jesus did not leave us the option that He was just some great moral teacher. Not at all. He claims to be so much more than that. Over and over and over He claims to be something else, something more. And that makes Jesus' biographies about as crazy as anything you have ever read or will ever read.

It also makes the accounts of His life easy to dismiss. There are those who believe the gospel accounts were written by amateurs well after the life of the man purported to be Jesus, after which it was elaborated on and edited in the ensuing centuries. But what a terrible job they all did! They have succeeded in giving humanity the most ridiculous character in all of literary history.

Jesus is worse than the deities of the pantheon—much worse. From Rome to Greece and back through history to Mesopotamia, to African and South American legends, to Aboriginal legends—these gods made no pretense of perfection. They are just grandiose expressions of humanity at best, full of vice and caprice and inconsistency. They were all just placeholders for our lack of understanding about the natural world.

Jesus is surely far worse than Mohammed, who made no claim to be God; he just claimed to receive a vision or visions from an angel. Delusional? Deceptive? Likely. But at least he didn't claim to be Allah. Jesus is worse than all the mystic religious leaders, none of whom claimed to be the one true God of the universe. They have merely suggested that following the path they did will bring an ultimate state of mind.

Perhaps I should revise my opinion of the gospel writers then: What an amazing job they did! They have succeeded in giving humanity the most ridiculous character in all of literary history. But why? Why would they do this? What motivation would they have to take a person, who may or may not have lived, and preserve some scant few of His words and then add hundreds, even thousands, of others, the combination of which would make Him out to be the most ridiculously self-aggrandizing, condescending, arrogant person who ever lived?

Oh, and while we're at it: how did they convince the world that He was meek and gentle and loving and just and kind and good? How did they inspire people—hundreds if not thousands of years after the fact—to write beautiful songs like "Jesus Loves Me," compose unparalleled symphonies, like Handel's "Messiah," and craft some of the world's most breathtaking art, like the Pieta (concluded on page 4)?

Why are we giving this obviously crazy person—or the crazy people who concocted Him—any attention AT ALL? And why would the authors—the original propagators of the nonsense—all die for it? And why, oh, why would the subsequent followers of that phony nonsense go to their graves brutally, as martyrs, and consistently for over 250 years with that name—the name of this crazy, deranged (whatever He was), charlatan, literary invention—on their tongues?

Unless, in fact, He was telling the truth.

Do you have a better explanation?