Quote:
Originally Posted by chetwesley
Of course you know religion and politics are the two things which inflame people the most, so I am reluctant to get into this, but it is my personal opinion that Jesus's life represented something which is timeless. There are many others who lived similar lives, to a greater or lesser degree - for example, Krishna
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jckr1.htm
It is hard to look at the Jesus story objectively because of facts getting lost in time and because of how people have taken the story and bent it to mean what they want to believe it means over time.
Imagine if we could just take the story of Jesus's life, and the things he is claimed to have said, as is with no religious (or anti-religious) belief or stimulus attached to it, like we can with the ancient Greek or Roman myths, or like people do with the sayings of the Buddha. We could probably get more out of it. |
This is another popular misconception.
Jesus, if the historical records are to be believed, did not leave you the option of accepting him as a goor moral teacher.
He made specific claims to be God.
He claimed that He was the only way to eternal life.
He was either the Creator-God who was made man, or he was a liar or a lunatic.
CS Lewis said it better than I:
C.S. Lewis 'Mere Christianity' page 56
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 good 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 with any patronising nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.