Jesus of Nazareth: lord or lunatic?
08/03/03
DAVID REINHARD
You read or hear it everywhere, though I'm always mystified when it
comes from a religious leader. "It" is what you might call "The
Domesticated Jesus" -- the Jesus even nonbelievers accept. He's not the
Son of God who rose from dead and sits at the right hand of God. He's not
God Incarnate. No, "The Domesticated Jesus" is none of that, but he is
most assuredly a great moral teacher, a man of blinding insight and
wisdom, an admirable human being.
It's an easy enough notion to hold. After all, there are Jesus'
teachings on love and forgiveness ("Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself") and his ministry to the weak and poor and dispossessed. It also
allows the most sophisticated types to tap into all this without buying
that weird other-worldly stuff.
"The Domesticated Jesus" was on display in a recent New York Times
article about a Lutheran pastor in Denmark who was suspended for declaring
some decidedly un-Christian views. "I do not believe in a physical God, in
the afterlife, in the resurrection, in the Virgin Mary," Pastor Thorkild
Grosboll said in writings and remarks. "I believe that Jesus was a nice
guy, who figured out what man wanted. He embodied what he believed was
needed to upgrade the human being."
Grosboll's meditations and suspension sparked quite a ruckus -- no mean
feat in religiously nonchalant Denmark -- but what interested me was not
the pastor's theological views or whether he should be allowed to remain a
pastor. It was his musings on "Mr. Nice Guy Jesus," the great moral
teacher and all-too-human master of human upgrades. Those musings took me
back to what was, for me, one of the most important passages in one of the
most important books I've ever read, C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity."
"I am trying . . . 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," the Cambridge University don wrote. "A man who was
merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. . . . You must make your choice. Either he was, and is, the
Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."
Precisely.
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is wonderful, but what about
Jesus' other words? Here's someone who walked the Earth saying he's God or
the son of God. "It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye
have made it a den of thieves," Jesus said famously at the temple.
Or this: "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will
love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
We have ways of dealing with folks who make such claims, and it's not
declaring them great moral teachers. But Jesus went even further. He
promised his own resurrection ("Hereafter shall the Son of Man sit on the
right hand of the power of God") and had the effrontery to forgive sins
that people committed against God or others ("Son, be of good cheer; thy
sins be forgiven thee"). Beyond all this, Jesus was very clear, judgmental
even, about what he believed was necessary to upgrade a human being: "I am
the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness,
but shall have the light of life."
Now, you don't need to believe any of this. You're free to conclude
it's all total rubbish. But it's impossible to maintain Jesus is just "Mr.
Nice Guy" and one of history's great moral teachers. "The Domesticated
Jesus" doesn't hold up logically. He's either lord or lunatic. He can't be
both.
I suppose you could say you believe certain things he's said to have
said and disbelieve others. But this seems arbitrary and makes about as
much sense as saying you believe some wack job also happens to one of the
world's great moral teachers.
"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," C.S. Lewis
wrote. "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."
In short, no more Mr. Nice Guy. David Reinhard is an associate editor.
