Jesus: Jerk, or Savior? Honestly Confronting the Galilean Carpenter

Written by Brian D. Wilson

A friend recently told me at a dinner party, "I think Jesus was a great moral teacher, but this stuff about him being God or God's Son is ridiculous."

I wasted no time in my reply. "If Jesus really was a mere man as you say then he was no great moral teacher at all. In fact he was a big jerk."

This sent the room into gasps of indignation. The irony was that I was the only Christian at the dinner table, while the other guests were either your typical Southern Californians with a strong interest in spirituality but none in religion, or atheists. And yet I was dead serious.

The Only Ticket in Town

Imagine the situation. Jesus is having the Passover dinner with his disciples and engages in one of the most humble acts ever recorded. He gets out a towel, fills a cistern with water, and begins to wash the disciple's feet.

Then comes the kicker. Judas leaves to betray Jesus while Jesus tells the other disciples of his imminent arrest. He says that he must leave, referring to his inevitable crucifixion. The disciples become confused prompting Thomas to ask, "Lord, we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way?" (John 14:5). Jesus replies, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6)

You want a human teacher, fine, but an unstable lunatic who says he is the only way to heaven comes with the package, and that is the problem. Often those who quote Jesus have never studied him. They get warm fuzzies reading that Yeshua washed the disciple's feet, but ignore the elephant in the room--his claim to be the only way to God.

This is no isolated incident on the part of this trouble making Galilean carpenter either. Throughout the New Testament this moral teacher only adds to the outrage: "I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he shall be saved," (John 10:9). "I am the true vine." (John 15: 1) "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him, may have eternal life." (John 6:40).

Apparently Jesus told John he is the exclusive way to heaven. How do you square that with his humanity? He is either a maniac or a power hungry charlatan--if his claims are untrue.

A Mere Mediator?

Then there are his claims to forgive sins. Jesus enters the home of a man in the town of Capernaum. Immediately word goes out and a throng begins to gather inside the house that eventually pours into the street. Four men soon arrive carrying a paralytic on a pallet.

The crowd has come to see a miracle, while the Pharisees have come to trip him up in his words. A miraculous healing indeed comes, but it is what happens just before that is surprising. Jesus looks at the multitude and says "But in order that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins" -- he said to the paralytic -- "I say to you rise, take up your pallet and go home." (Mark 2:10-12).

Again Jesus is invited into the house of a Pharisee named Simon. A "sinful" woman, probably a prostitute, comes to where Jesus is sitting and pours fragrant oils on his feet to anoint him. When she is done Jesus makes a lesson of her to Simon, noting her devotion to him. Then he looks at her and says, "Your sins have been forgiven." (Luke 7:48).

What? A healing is one thing, but twice comes the claim by the Galilean that he can forgive sins. The outrage is magnified when one considers that those in ancient Jewish culture absolutely believed that only God can forgive sins.

Just to let this set in consider this question: What if you came to me one evening and told me that for the past year and a half you have been having an affair with my wife? What if I replied, "I know what you have done and I forgive you." You would likely be both relieved and surprised by my magnanimity.

However, suppose you came to me and said, "I have something pretty shocking to tell. You know our mutual friend at the office Carl, right? I have been having an affair with his wife for over a year." Suppose I replied, "You have done a bad thing, but do not worry, your sins have been forgiven. I absolve you of the wrong you have committed against your friend."

Jesus was not telling the prostitute that he forgave her of any offense against him personally. Rather, he was saying that the offenses she committed against others had been wiped away. No mere man who says that he can forgive the sins of others is a great moral teacher.

Not even a priest absolves sins in that manner. He is merely a mediator for God. In fact, you would be within your rights to call the men with the little white truck and long jackets to take me away if I ever said something like that. And I doubt least of all that you would deem me a great moral teacher.

No Patronizing Nonsense

This of course will not satisfy those who wish to preserve the sweet gentle Jesus of their imaginations. They will protest these supposedly uncharacteristic words of Jesus, "The Bible has been translated, copied, and corrupted by individuals so many times over the years that you can't trust it."

There are a couple of problems with this answer. The first is that the only historical documents about Jesus with enough detail to even determine that he was a significant figure, let alone a great moral teacher, comes from the New Testament. So you are throwing out the baby with the bath water. If you toss out a corrupted Bible as indeterminate then you must forever surrender your admiration for the Galilean, because you have no historical grounds upon which to make the claim that he was a great human teacher.

Secondly, it is strange that those who argue the Bible is corrupted always find historical error in precisely those places where they happen to disagree with the Bible's theology. They accept the Jesus who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God," (Matthew 5:9) but reject the Jesus who said, "Do you think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's woes will be those of his own household." (Matthew 10:34-36).

It was C.S. Lewis, an Oxford professor of Medieval Literature, who best summed this apparent dilemma.

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 a 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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.1

In a universe where contradictions like married-bachelors and square-circles cannot exist, it is in our own best interest not to lie to ourselves about this Jesus fellow. We ought to either accept him in his entirety or reject him in his entirety. The only alternative is to create a Jesus after our own image, in which case it is appropriate to ask whether it is not we, and not Jesus, who are the delusional ones.

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1 Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1952, 40.

© Copyright 2009 Brian D. Wilson