Contemplation on Easter

Let's start with a quote on my mind these past few days. This is typically referred to as the Lewis Trilemma by apologists and critics:

"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 patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

With that stated, I think it would be wise for me to point out the other alternative one might possibly apply to the person of Jesus Christ...that he didn't exist at all (or perhaps, just not in the way the Bible describes him). We will call this an error in the historical record.

So it is true, that at least based on the biblical account of Christ we can not infer that he was only some great moral teacher. Within the pages of scripture alone, we do only have those two choices. Of course, the people in Jesus' day who were familiar with scripture faced those very same choices, and as the history presented in the Bible will show us, many people felt quite sure that Jesus was nothing but a liar and/or a madman...certainly not God Incarnate as Jesus had claimed.

What I'd rather spend time discussing is the perspective of most people that could be affected by a consideration of the person of Jesus. And that perspective leads us straight out of the Bible. You see, the Bible is not a Holy Book or useful historical record to people who do not believe the contents of it's pages. In fact, a historical record is only useful to modern people insofar as it can be proven to be reliable.

So the question for a non-Christian person to start with would best be stated as "how do I know that this book even comes close to accurately recording the existence or activities of Jesus, a history dated nearly 2,000 years ago?"

If I found a series of letters claiming to be written by Abraham Lincoln that appeared to me to be in his own handwriting, I seriously doubt that the Smithsonian Museum would immediately place them on display. More likely, they would have a handful of experts inspect them, compare with the content and style of known samples and then come to a conclusion regarding the veracity of my find. The human mind does more or less the same thing every time we are presented with a new piece of information, whether spoken or written.

It is because of this natural human thought process that the Bible cannot be presented as fact without reason to people who do not believe. Of course, I should point out that this very same kind of logic permeates every house of education in the world. We are taught many things in school - history class, in this case - that are not fully substantiated, primarily in consideration for the small amount of time we have to learn everything as we are going through school. For instance, your average person - myself included - could not tell you today what the exact evidence is that proves the existence of Genghis Khan. Did we find letters, stories, oral history, statues? And if so, did it all prove his existence as a person, or have we misinterpreted legend as fact over these last 800 or so years? Was he really just a scary story told to kids around a campfire?

Nonetheless, most people wouldn't spend any serious amount of time trying to convince anyone that he did not exist. The point I'm trying to make is that through the course of our learning, we have all come to just simply accept some things as true without necessarily trying to find out any further substantiating evidence. Was Genghis Khan real? Sure...er, I dunno...um, yes. Of course he was. Sure. Right...? I'm sure there's evidence, I just, uh, don't...really know right now.

Jesus, however, is different in that billions of people have claimed Him for their salvation from sin. Because of that, and because it requires a good Christian to encourage others to adopt the same belief, it becomes of the utmost importance that strong evidence be provided.

And unfortunately, this is the part of my blog where I let everyone down. See, I don't have strong enough evidence to convince some people of what I believe to be true based upon my own studies. Others, however, would probably be more than satisfied by the evidence I could place on the table. Likewise, it has taken me an awful long time to get to where I am in my understanding of my own Christian faith, so it can be a bit overwhelming when I consider to undertake this type of conversation with someone who does not believe as I do.

You see, there is a certain element of faith to this, as their is in so many things. We of course did put our faith in the education system when we accepted that Ghengis Khan was ever a real person without full substantiating evidence. But with the claimed person of Jesus being so much bigger than just a historical record, it is all the more important that we - that I - be prepared for the questions that come with this territory we occupy.

So my words tonight exist as a challenge...to me, to a fellow believer, and even to those who have doubts however severe - consider all that you can about His existence, the things that are written about Him and the things people claim about Him. Consider how it could ever be true, and undertake a full study on all you can find about Jesus Christ. If you do this, I believe you will become a more convicted believer and a wonderful asset in helping your fellow man. If you currently do not believe any thing written about Jesus, you may not ever find the truth that I claim, but I think you will at least understand a little better what it is that binds someone like myself to this person who walked on the Earth nearly 2,000 years ago.


POSTSCRIPT

As a side thought, I would like to point out that C.S. Lewis himself came to be a believer in Christ following an extended period of his life that he had claimed to be an atheist (not believing in any sort of God). Lewis undertook a study of Christianity in particular to see if he could come up with a solid set of proofs against the logic of believers in Christ. As history well records, he became instead one of the more influential Christian writers in the 2nd half of this past century. Take that to mean whatever you wish, but understand that it is difficult for anyone to undertake any serious study of the person of Christ and remain totally ambivalent about his existence on either side of faith.