Lord, Liar or Lunatic?

I'll start with a quote from C.S Lewis (yup, he did more than write about lions, witches and wardrobes) to introduce the issues that I'll be discussing in this blog:

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 human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (source - Mere Christianity: C.S Lewis)

Yes, that's right. Jesus was not a great moral teacher. Jesus claimed to be able to forgive sins, to be the representative of all humanity come to die in order to reconcile man to God, and to be the only way for people to attain salvation. A great moral teacher would not say these things if they were not true. And so, it is impossible to see Jesus as being a great moral teacher but not to believe that He was the Son of God. If you do not believe that he was the Son of God than you must either see him as a liar or a madman. In this blog, I will try and refute both of these possibilities.

First of all, was Jesus lying? Was He an egotistical man that wanted to be controversial and in the spotlight regardless of the cost to Him and the people that got tortured on His behalf when they refused to deny Him? The question we need to ask is, was Jesus really convinced that He was the Son of God?

A clue to how Jesus saw Himself is in his relationship with John the Baptist. Jesus says "Of all people born of woman, John is the greatest man on earth". Now, we all know that Jesus did a lot more here on earth than John the Baptist - performing miracles for example. What does this statement then say about how He viewed Himself? (source - The Case for Christ: Lee Strobel)

Another clue to the way that Jesus viewed himself is in the way he began His teachings: at the beginning of every teaching he began with the phrase "Amen I say to you" which means "I swear in advance to the truthfulness of what I'm about to say". Now, in Judaism you needed the testimony of two witnesses, so witness A could witness the truth of witness B and vice versa, but Jesus witnesses the truth of His own sayings. Instead of basing his teaching on the authority of others, he speaks on His own authority.

Now, I could be here all day picking out quotes from the Bible but you could all turn around and say that if Jesus were a liar then of course He would say these kind of things in order to convince people of His testimony. But would He really carry this lie to the death? When faced with Pontius Pilate, the man that had the power to crucify Him, Pilate asked Jesus privately if He was the Son of God and King of the Jews. Instead of taking back all his claims, Jesus was adamant, saying "My Kingdom is not of this world" and "You are right in saying I am a King. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me". Now tell me this, how many people do you know who have died for something that they know to be a lie? People have died for lies, yes, just look at David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, but those people believed with everything they had that they were dying for something they knew to be true. If Jesus were lying, He would know that he was about to be crucified, killed in the most painful, brutal way possible, and yet He still didn't renounce His claims, even though doing so would probably have resulted in Him being allowed to remain alive as He would no longer be committing the sin of blaphemy. (source - The Bible:John)

Thus, Jesus can't have been a liar. People will die for their passions but not something that they know to be a lie. As a Jew and therefore a firm believer in God, Jesus must have known that if He was lying, he would wind up in Hell upon dying. It seems a little drastic, not only to be prepared to be tortured to the death for something you know to be a lie but also to do this with the belief that you would spend eternity in Hell upon dying.

This brings me to the other possibility. I will admit, the possibility that Jesus was crazy is far more credible than the claims of His being a liar. But I believe that I can still show just how improbable these claims were.

Experts say that people suffering from delusional psychosis may appear rational much of the time yet can have grandiose beliefs that they are superlative individuals. Some can even attract followers who believe they're geniuses. Maybe that's what happened with Jesus? (source - The Case for Christ: Lee Strobel). However, psychologist Gary. R. Collins P.H.D says "psychologists don't just look at what a person says. They'll go much deeper than that. They'll look at a person's emotions, because disturbed individuals frequently show inappropriate depression, or they might be vehemently angry, or perhaps they're plagued with anxiety. But look at Jesus: he never demonstrated inappropriate emotions. For instance, he cried at the death of his friend Lazarus - that's natural for an emotionally healthy individual". Jesus also got angry at times, but only ever with good reason: it was never documented that He got irrationally angry just because somebody was annoying Him.

More so, Jesus never showed signs of paranoia: he understood that there were some very real dangers around Him but he never showed signs of mistrusting people and being obsessed that he was being watched or plotted against as people with paranoid schizophrenia often are.

Sometimes people with psychological difficulties have thinking disorders. They can't hold a conversation, they jump to faulty conclusions and are irrational. However, Jesus spoke clearly, powerfully and eloquently. He was the voice of calm and many people turned to him for His logical, collected responses to situations. Jesus also never demonstrated other signs associated with insanity such as dressing oddly or being unable to socially relate to others (some of the "negative" symptoms of schizophrenia).

Other observations of Jesus include that "He was loving but didn't let His compassion for people immobilize Him; He didn't have a bloated ego despite often being surrounded by adoring crowds; He maintained a sense of balance despite a demanding lifestyle; He always knew what He was doing and where He was going; He cared deeply about people, including women and children, who weren't seen as being important back then; He was able to accept people while not merely winking at their sin and he responded to individuals based on where they were at and what they uniquely needed...He was much healthier than anyone else I know -- including me!" Gary R. Collins P.H.D

There is much more evidence to account for what I've said but if I went into much more detail I'm pretty sure I'd have written a book. My personal conclusion is that there is enough evidence to discount the claims that Jesus was a liar and that He was crazy. I have also found much evidence to argue FOR Him being the Son of God but my aim of this blog was not to discuss that evidence: it was to dismiss the other.