JESUS: Lord, Joker, or Lunatic?
Have you ever wondered who this guy Jesus really was? Oh, sure, you’ve heard the “born-agains” talk about Him, about how the Romans nailed Him to a wooden cross, and then how He “rose from the dead”.
Heh! How can anyone with a shred of intelligence believe that kind of bunk? Good question.
Let’s take a look at this man Jesus from a thinker’s perspective. First of all, it’s pretty clear that He actually lived and walked on this planet over 1900 years ago. Any history book will tell you that. He was born into a simple Jewish family. He walked, talked, ate, slept, drank, laughed, cried, and yes, even used the outhouse like the rest of us. So what’s the big deal?
Well, Jesus claimed that He was God. That’s a pretty strong statement. Today if you heard someone make such a claim, you’d think he was only joking, or, if he were serious about it, you’d whisk him away to the funny farm post haste.
What if jesus were only joking when he said that he was God? Let’s assume for the moment that His entire life was a big sham, that all He did was deceive a group of sincere but misguided peasants. That raises a number of difficult questions. First, if He were merely joking, then a lot of people missed the punchline and wound up taking Him seriously. Millions, literally. The religious hierarchy of His day evidently considered Him to be a heretic. More than once, the Pharisees walked away from Him fuming at the gills because He dared to make such a claim, even in jest.
The toughest question of all, if Jesus were only joking, is why would He carry on to the point where people wanted to kill Him? I could just see it: “Hey, guys, let me down. I was only kiddin’!” What joker would die for a joke? Only a crazy one.
That brings up the second choice. Jesus must have been a nut. A bozo. An A-1 fruitcake. Any guy who’d die for a lie has lost his marbles. The problem is, Jesus was not crazy. Far from it.
Countless people in His day were impressed with His wisdom. Even as a youth, He was found in the temple teaching the elders of His church. On numerous occasions, smart talkers tried to trip Him up and He outwitted every one of them. He also made predictions about the future, many of which have already come to pass. One mathematician calculated that the odds of His predictions coming true exactly as He
said were the equivalent of marking a single silver dollar and throwing it into a pile of silver dollars two feet high covering the state of California, then picking the marked one while blindfolded. Crazy? The evidence shows otherwise.
The real evidence points to the fact that Jesus was neither a
joker nor a lunatic: Jesus really was God. In the flesh. And since
God is eternal, then Jesus is eternal. He is alive today, He was
alive yesterday, and He will be alive tomorrow. Count on it.
If you want to know more about Jesus, you know where to look.
But don’t just stop with the new testament. The entire Bible points
to Him, from the book of Genesis right through to the book of
Revelation. And why not? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No one can get to the Father except through me.” There is
no other way.
Narrow Way BBS
Manchester, NH.
