Jesus: Liar, Lunatic or Lord

Stephen King is most famous as the horror author who brought us films like ‘The Shining’, ‘IT’ and ‘Carrie’ (movies adapted from his books). What he is less known for are his more ‘feel good’ stories like ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘The Green Mile’. In fact, in an interview he recounts a woman scolding him for his work:

“I was in a supermarket down here in Florida, and I came around the corner and there was a woman coming the other way. She pointed at me, she said, ‘I know who you are! You’re Stephen King! You write all of those horrible things. And that’s ok. That’s alright. But I like uplifting things, like that movie Shawshank Redemption.’ And I said, ‘I wrote that!’ And she said, ‘No you didn’t. No you didn’t.”

No one (let alone an author) appreciate being misrepresented or misunderstood even if it’s good natured and unintentional. We want to be understood truly, as we genuinely are. And this stands for Jesus also.

It’s often said of Jesus, something along the lines of ’he was a good teacher and a great man, but not the Son of God’. Saying this is often a way of attempting to show Jesus some deference whilst also having some skepticism about him at the same time. The problem is that it really is all or nothing with Jesus…he either was who he said he was, or he was nothing at all. CS Lewis sums it up perfectly when he writes:

“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 — 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. 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.”

Jesus must be, in the end, liar lunatic or Lord.