Jesus the poached egg

"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." CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

I really like this quote by C.S. Lewis. I think if I had been exposed to this in my youth it may have had a deep impact on the way I viewed Jesus. I didn't become a Christian until college, and prior to that religion just was a non-factor in my life. I do remember this argument of Jesus as a great teacher but not the Son of God being brought up a few times. I think it's something people say when they're just not comfortable believing in Jesus but don't want to fully admit it out loud.

But when you really study the Gospels and all of the things Jesus said-it's just too hard to make that claim and get away with it. Either Jesus was who he said he was, or he was freakin' crazy, or a liar. Jesus drew a line in the sand about who He was, He never left his purpose of being on Earth open to interpretation. EastLake did a talk about this very topic on Easter that was fantastic, non-patronizing, and then went one step further and gave examples of how God's love continues to work in us and heal people today. Listen to it here if you're interested.