Wednesday, February 18, 2009

"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 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 patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

-C.S. Lewis, the British author and professor at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, once an agnostic himself, wrote these words about Jesus Christ in his book Mere Christianity.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Will...
Trav made me come over here to your blog. Cool thoughts man. I remember being faced with this thought during my first year of college. I hadn't given my life to Christ and was pretty skeptical about Jesus. I know it ultimately comes down to faith and trust but it is great to have words from a guy like C.S. Lewis to make us think.
I am curious what someone who does not share our belief would say in response to this quote... hmmmm... maybe someone else will comment.
Thanks Will.
Curtis

The McCabe's said...

Hey Curtis -

Thanks for the thoughts. Trav talks about you constantly, so may we'll get to meet up some day. Regarding your comment, I have actually had some stimulating conversations started from this quote. If you are talking to someone who doesn't believe in God/Jesus at all, you have to start somewhere else. You are right though, CS Lewis was a great writer and apologist and is one of the mainstays on my bookshelf.

-Will