What Did You Say?

A sixty-seven year old proud atheist friend of mine recently interjected the  sweeping statement “all religion is irrational” into one of our conversations. I  replied, not with a direct rebuttal but, instead, with the unexpected question, “who is Jesus Christ?” He replied, “I don’t know.” If I were to ask some of you  why I pulled that question out of left field you might also reply with a  bewildered “I don’t know.” So keep reading. Please.

If you have never really pondered the question “who is Jesus Christ?” then  you simply cannot consider yourself to be a committed intellectual – at least  not yet. Let me say that in a different way: if you have never given serious  thought to the true identity of the most important individual ever to walk the  face of the earth then you are either a) suffering from severe intellectual  hernia, or b) possessed of an intellect impaired by a fear of knowing the true  answer to the question.

Let me begin by defending the assertion that Jesus Christ was the most  important individual ever to walk the face of the earth. 1) We divide time using  the date of Jesus’ birth. 2) More books have been written about Jesus than  anyone else in recorded history. Case closed. Now we can move on to the issue of  fear and intellectual curiosity.

The options we are given for understanding the identity of Jesus are so  limited that no one who is truly intelligent can be behaving rationally if he  just avoids the question altogether. Take, for example, my friend who has lived  2/3 of a century on this planet without so much as attempting to work through  the options. I don’t want you to be one of those irrational people so let’s get  to work.

When addressing the question of Jesus’ identity, there are only four  available options. Anyone who has ever read C.S. Lewis or Josh McDowell knows  that Jesus was either: 1) A legend, 2) a lunatic, 3) a liar, or 4) the Lord.

The idea that Jesus was merely a legend, as opposed to someone who actually  lived, is simply not an option we can take seriously (at least not for long).  Independent historical accounts, by that I mean accounts written by  non-Christians, are enough to put this option to rest. Jesus is cited by 42  sources within 150 years of his life, and nine of those sources are  non-Christian. By contrast, the Roman Emperor Tiberius is only mentioned by 10  sources. If you believe Tiberius existed, how can you not believe in a man who  is cited by four times as many people and has had an immeasurably greater impact  on history? You can believe that if you wish. But then you risk forfeiting any  claim to be considered rational.

Nor is it rational to consider Jesus to have been a lunatic. Perhaps you  could maintain that belief if you’ve never read the Bible. But how can a person  claim to be educated if he’s never read the Bible?

World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky once entertained the notion that Jesus  was a mere lunatic. But, then, in the early 1970s, as an atheist and a communist  graduate student, he examined the words of Jesus for the first time. He was  traveling to Russia on a ship and wanted to brush up on his Russian. But all he  had with him to read (that just happened to be written in Russian) was a copy of  the New Testament. And so he read. And he was transformed.

Marvin recognized immediately that the words of Jesus represent a profound  level of moral understanding that rises above anything else that has ever been  written. Read for yourself the words of Jesus. Then read the words of Charles  Manson. Try to convince me that they are one in the same – merely two lunatics  who mistakenly thought they were the Messiah. You have a right to that opinion.  But you don’t have a right to be considered rational if you cannot detect a  glaring difference between the teachings of Christ and Manson.

So, now only two options remain. And this is where the real trouble begins.  If we call Jesus a liar (who falsely claimed to be God) then we cannot also call  him a great moral teacher. One cannot be both. But many look at the final option  of calling him Lord and panic. To go there means to accept belief in the  supernatural. And surely that couldn’t be rational. Or could it?

Science has taught us a lot since the Bible was written. For one thing, we  know that the universe had a beginning. It is expanding, it is finite, and it  was not always here. Put simply, Carl Sagan was wrong. In fact, he was dead  wrong. The cosmos is not all that is or was or that ever will be. It had a  beginning. It is irrational to dismiss the obvious implications of this: that  the universe was caused by a supernatural force existing outside of space and  time.

People have to let go of the idea that the natural world is all there is  because that is not where the science leads us. It instead leads us away from  the philosophical commitment to only considering naturalistic explanations for  the things we observe in the physical universe. This also leads us to one very  important question: if a supernatural force was great enough to create the  universe could the force or being not also reenter creation? And another related  question: is the force or being responsible for creating life not also able to  conquer death?

Arguably, the resurrection is a pretty small accomplishment in comparison  with the creation of the universe. But that doesn’t mean it happened. The  evidence must be judged on its own merits. I recommend that serious  intellectuals start here.

Of course, you could just keep avoiding the question while judging others to  be irrational. But there’s no avoiding the plank in your own eye.

About the author: Mike Adams

 Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina  Wilmington and author of Letters  to a Young Progressive: How To Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You  Don’t Understand.

Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2013/12/jesus-christ-irrational/#hiUt65hThwAsVFeP.99