Les Jones

Quotes > C.S. Lewis

"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 one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing 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, Mere Christianity

Bill Hobbs said something similar that struck me.

I've always wondered why self-professed Christians who don't accept that Jesus was God in the flesh, that he really was crucified on a Roman cross, and really was resurrected, bother to wake up early and go to church on Sundays. They reject Jesus' own claims about himself - they believe him a liar - yet participate in the religious activities because they like his ethics? I'm rather simplistic about things. Seems to me if Jesus lied, I'm sleeping in. But I don't believe he lied.

As always, I'm a big stinkin' heathen so I don't have a dog in this fight, but to me the "Jesus wasn't the son of God but he was a swell guy and golly is he quotable" line sounds like an artless dodge.