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Plenty of people turn to religion for the platitudes, not the personal challenge. An hour on Sunday spent listening to heartwarming anecdotes seems like time well spent--so long as there are no strings attached or adjustments required. Therein lies the rub.
A number of such people admire Jesus for His teachings but reject his claim of divine authority. This is nothing less than a buffet approach to faith: cherry picking what appeals, and leaving behind that which doesn’t conform to individual taste. Some say Christ never claimed to be coequal with God. But the same Bible that recounts Jesus’ teachings also clearly gives us an account of His self-identity:
If we accept as valid the biblical record of His teachings (most folks don’t mind, say, the Golden Rule), we’re hard pressed to then say Jesus never claimed to be God. Since He did, we are left with a narrow range of responses, as famously summarized by 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 the one thing we must not say. A man who 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.”Who Jesus is and what he preached are inseparable. The Gospel of John opens by referring to Him as "The Word." As a little girl is said to have remarked, "that's because He was everything God wanted to tell us."
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