www.ChristDeaf.org
The Mustard Seed
December 2007
Gallaudet
Lutheran Student Fellowship
|
Bible Study
Every
Thursday 3:30 pm
Ely
118
Worship
1st Sunday of each month
2:00 PM in the SUB Chapel
Everyone is welcome!
|
|
"Prove
it!"
(Part 1)
Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do people say that I am?"
His disciples responded with a list of titles, all variations of the same
theme: "They say that you are a great prophet." So what!?
The history of world religions is littered with an uncountable number of "great
prophets."
Jesus then asks the critical question: "But who do YOU say that I
am?"
Cambridge University professor and avowed agnostic, C. S. Lewis, loved
to sit in the pub and debate myth and religion with his friend, J. R. R.
Tolkein. Tolkein was a Christian, but Lewis could not accept Jesus'
claims to be God and Savior. Eventually the weight of the evidence
overpowered Lewis' skepticism. To remain an unbeliever would have been
intellectually dishonest. Later Lewis presented the evidence in his book, Mere Christianity.
He wrote:
"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
-- one on the 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."
Either Jesus is God and humanity's eternal Savior, or He isn't. If
He isn't, then what do we do with His claim to be our God and Savior?
"It's simple," you may say. "Jesus was wrong."
Okay. If Jesus was wrong, did He deliberately lie? ...in which
case He does not qualify as a "good moral teacher." To knowingly make
such a false claim and deceive millions of people by offering false hope is
neither good nor moral. It would, in fact, be evil. But if you
carefully study what Jesus taught and all that He stood for, you find nothing
that can be accurately characterized as "evil."
On the other hand, did Jesus sincerely believe that He was God in the flesh
and Savior for all humanity, but was simply mistaken? Again, He would
not qualify for the title "good moral teacher." Rather, He would
be a crazy man that needed to be locked up! But if you carefully study
what Jesus taught and all that He stood for, you find nothing that shows the
instability of a crazy man.
Not a liar? Not crazy? Then we have only one option left:
Jesus was and is whom He claimed to be. And each of us are faced with
the avoidable decision that Tolkein posed to Lewis: What will you do with Jesus?
~~Pastor
Ron
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If you would like to be included, please send your email address to Ron.Friedrich@gallaudet.edu |
My campus office hours
are
Tuesday and Thursday
afternoons
in Ely 118.
Drop in and introduce
yourself!!
Pastor Ron Friedrich
Ron.Friedrich@gallaudet.edu
[Gallaudet Office of
Campus Ministry]