There is not much that was new in the teachings of Christianity. From the Hammurabi Code to the Ten Commandments, from Socrates and Plato, and from many other sources, similar teachings had already been introduced in the world. What was new was Christ himself! And that’s the great stumbling block for many of us as C. S. Lewis pointed out in his book, Mere Christianity:
“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 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.”
I guess that means that the chief point of the story given us in the gospels is not the teachings so much as the Person of Jesus. According to Genesis 6:1-4, we are all sons and daughters of God. Lewis writes that there is a “Christ-life” in each of us. Does the mean that we all have the potential to become as fully human ( sons and daughters of God) as Jesus?
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| The last iris of the season |
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