[From Dww-work]… LORD, LIAR OR LUNATIC

CS Lewis in Mere Christianity writes:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “”‘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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

–CS Lewis in Mere Christianity in “What Christians Believe,” 3. The Shocking Alternative.

Josh McDowell summarizes our choices, calling it the “great trilemma”: Jesus was either Lord, Liar or Lunatic.

…They (Jewish people) usually tell me that Jesus was a moral, upright, religious leader, a good man, or some kind of prophet. I then share with them the claims Jesus made about himself.

…When I ask if they believe Jesus was a liar, there is a sharp “No!” Then I ask, “do you believe he was a lunatic?” The reply is “Of courese not.” “Do you believe he is God?” Before I can get a breath in edgewise, there is a resounding “Absolutely not.” Yet one has only so many choices.

The evidence is clearly in favor of Jesus as Lord. Some people, however, reject this clear evidence because of the moral implications involved. They don’t want to face up to the responsibility or implications of calling him Lord.

-in More Than a Carpenter, p. 33

LEWIS, C. S.; MCDOWELL, JOSH; APOLOGETICS; JESUS; LORDSHIP OF CHRIST; EVANGELISM