Jesus: Jerk, or Savior? Honestly Confronting the Galilean Carpenter - Page 3

Written by Brian D. Wilson

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 The first is that the only historical documents about Jesus with enough detail to even determine that he was a significant figure, let alone a great moral teacher, comes from the New Testament.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