By David Ryser
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 patronizing
nonsense about his being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to
us. He did not intend to. (C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity)
A few years ago, my wife and I
retired and moved to a small community in the mountains of central Arkansas. We
very much enjoy living here among the mountains, trees, and lakes while seeing
all sorts of wildlife daily. The people in our community are, for the most
part, good people, and we have met some who have become dear friends. As in
many such small towns, the community boasts a weekly newspaper which keeps us
informed of the goings-on in our area. Among the regular columns in the
newspaper is one written by a local pastor.
I typically do not read this
column.
Recently, a friend…who knows I once
was in the religion business…cut the most recent installment of the
aforementioned column out of the paper and brought it to me asking me to read
it and to tell her what I thought of it when I was finished.
I read the article and found it
quite interesting.
To his credit, the pastor shares
his biases and presuppositions with the readers of his article, a trait I wish
all journalists…secular and religious alike…possessed and demonstrated. And
what are these biases and presuppositions you ask? Well, here they are in his own
words: “Let me confess in print that I consider myself to be an agnostic, a
humanist, and a Christian. Agnostic because absolute certainty about God is not
possible. A Christian, not because I believe Jesus was God (I don’t) but
because he offered the best plan for living a life of dignity and service.
Humanist because I’m certain that the only tools at my personal disposal are
curiosity, conscience, compassion, and a compelling desire to spread kindness.”
That’s a lot to digest, and it
makes my head hurt when I attempt to take it in all at once, so let us consider
his statement one piece at a time.
First, this pastor’s claim to be
agnostic is philosophically vacuous. Absolute certainty about God…or anyone/anything
else for that matter…is not possible, but that does not make one an agnostic.
Only God has absolute certainty about God, but this is not a basis for
agnosticism. If it were, everyone who is not God would be an agnostic. To base
his agnosticism on the impossibility of absolute certainty about God places
this pastor philosophically on the level with a man who is unsure about whether
he is married because he does not have absolute certainty about his wife….as if
any man does. But, joking aside, how do we have absolute certainty about anyone…including
whether they even exist? We could be living in a delusion, seeing and
interacting with imaginary people. We could be living in a hologram designed to
teach us moral lessons with ourselves as the only genuine creatures in the
hologram. If you would challenge me to prove my actual existence to you with
absolute certainty, I would be unable to do so. I might not be motivated even
to attempt to do so since I’m not convinced of your existence with absolute
certainty. Why would I attempt to prove my existence to a possibly imaginary
entity?
Do you see my dilemma?
Next, the pastor claims to be a
Christian based upon his belief that Jesus…although not divine…through his
teachings, offered the best plan for living a life of dignity and service. He
may very well believe this, but upon what basis? Has this pastor thoroughly
examined the teachings of all the other spiritual teachers? If so, he is
remarkably well-read, well-traveled, and unimaginably old. In order to declare
a particular teacher’s teachings on how to live a life of dignity and service
to be superior to all others, one would need to have researched exhaustively
all of the others.
And even then, could he be
absolutely certain (See what I did there?) that he fully understood those teachings in
their historical, cultural, and linguistic context to the point where he wholly
and accurately understood the teachings as the teachers themselves understood
them?
And what about Jesus?
Claiming to accept Jesus as a
great…perhaps the greatest…moral teacher without acknowledging Him as the
divine Son of God comes with the problem C.S. Lewis so eloquently described in
the passage quoted at the beginning of this article. Because Jesus claimed to be
divine. Several times. In many different ways.
His claims to deity, and the teachings of His followers concerning His
deity subsequent to His ascension into the heavens, are too numerous to list
here. As we read the New Testament, we can readily identify numerous instances
of this. And these don’t include the ones we miss. For example, Jesus often
referred to Himself as the Son of Man. This is not a declaration of His
humanity. The term “Son of Man” first appears in the book of Daniel (Daniel 7:13-14)
and was understood by the Jewish people in Jesus’ day to be speaking of the victorious
Messiah in a context that clearly depicts Him as a heavenly being.
And when Jesus used the term, both
His followers and enemies clearly understood what He was saying about Himself.
And if Jesus was wrong about
something as basic as who He was…or, worse yet, lied about who He was…then what
else might be flawed in His teachings? Is He a delusional megalomaniac? A narcissist? A
lunatic? Demonized? A charlatan? And does any one of these possibilities
qualify Him to be a great moral teacher?
Jesus’ teachings are grounded in
who He is. He and they are not divisible.
We accept the teachings…moral and
spiritual…of Jesus as authoritative/superior because He is divine, and His
teachings originate from the throne of the Father/God. If the teachings come
from any other source, we are free to disregard them in whole, or in part, with
impunity.
So, what about the pastor’s claim
to be a humanist?
I accept this claim as genuine. I
have no reason to doubt this man consistently demonstrates the virtues of
curiosity, conscience, compassion, and a compelling desire to spread kindness.
If I were to meet him, I likely would find him to be a gentle soul who shows
love for, and benevolence toward, everyone he meets.
In short, I believe he is a good
man.
So, what about us? What about we
who claim to have, as a result of believing in Jesus our divine Lord and Savior,
the life and nature of Christ living in us through the indwelling Holy Spirit
whose life and power are daily transforming us into the image of Christ? Surely
this transformation includes a display of curiosity, conscience, compassion,
and a compelling desire to spread kindness...along with the fruit of the Spirit
listed in the 5th chapter of Galatians and the love of God described
in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians. These are what comprise
the nature of Christ that we claim to have residing in us. So, we can expect
these attributes to be demonstrated consistently in our lives.
And if they are not, then why not?
Responses to this article are
welcomed. You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com
