Megalomaniac, Liar or Other?
The Australian Atheist picked up this comment in a post (from Australia, unsurprisingly) about Jesus:
There is no room in this story for regarding this Jesus as merely a good spiritual teacher. He was either a dangerous megalomaniac, a liar or what he said he was.
And on the basis that Jesus probably/certainly (who knows, it was a long time ago) believed that the end of the world was nigh, concludes that the most likely answer is either dangerous megalomaniac, or a liar.
I don’t dispute that of the three, those are the two more likely statements. The chances of anyone being resurrected within a few years of their death and returning on “clouds of glory” is, let’s just say remote, to be polite.
As you may know, these choices were famously posed by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity
I read Mere Christianity a few months ago, on the recommendation of some friends (one atheist, one Christian) and strongly disagreed with lots (but not all) of the book. And this question was one of the things that I disagreed with. There are, after all, plenty of other choices. My favourite is that Jesus was just wrong.
Yes, he thought the world was going to come to an end and that God would come to rule, but plenty of people genuinely think that all the time without suffering from uncontrollable mental illness. And there are certifiably competent people who go round thinking much weirder things, like the world is ruled by an elite cabal of lizards posing as humans.
Me, I think Jesus was an ordinary dude living in interesting times who had some good ideas, got carried away, and ended up being executed. And living on in the collective memories of his friends, and their minions. And now he’s really famous. But still dead.
Image of the Sea of Galilee by ChrisYunkerÂ
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