The Father and I are one. [John 10:30 (NLT)]
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. … Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. … And remember, my words are not my own. What I am telling you is from the Father who sent me. [John 14:6,11a,24b (NLT)]
In C.S. Lewis’ children’s fantasy novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the youngest child, Lucy Pevensie, happens upon an enchanted armoire and steps into the magical world of Narnia. Upon returning, she rushes to tell her siblings of her astonishing adventure. Hearing such a tall tale and finding no concrete proof of its truth, her older siblings assume the story to be a figment of her imagination. They take their concern over her falsehood to their wise elderly uncle. He cautions them to use logic and consider Lucy’s story carefully. He points out there are only three possibilities: either she’s lying, crazy, or telling the truth. After pointing out that lies usually are more plausible than Lucy’s inexplicable tale, he asks if she’s lied before. The children admit she’s always been truthful. After pointing out that none of Lucy’s behavior indicates mental illness, they all agree she can’t have gone mad. He then suggests that since she’s neither a liar nor crazy, they could consider the possibility that Lucy’s story is true.
Interestingly, this is the same line of reasoning Lewis uses in what is called the “Lewis trilemma” or his “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” argument found in Mere Christianity. Lewis uses this logical argument when people claim to believe in the existence of Jesus as a great moral teacher but not as God (which, unfortunately, many people do). Jesus certainly talked as if He were God. He professed to be able to forgive sins and to be the only way to the Father. He claimed to have existed since the beginning of time, that He was a heavenly king who offered everlasting life, that to know Him was to know God, and that He would judge the world at the end of time. He called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath, the true vine, the bread of life, the resurrection and the life, and the way and the truth and the life.
Lewis points out that we have only three choices about those fantastic claims: Jesus was either a liar who perpetrated a fraud, a madman with delusions of grandeur, or the Lord. If His claims were untrue, the one thing Jesus couldn’t have been was a principled man or an excellent teacher of morals and ethics!
There are many people who consider Jesus simply to be a Jewish version of Buddha or Socrates: a great man, filled with compassion and love, who had some profound and noble ideas. That whole Messiah/Son of God thing, however, just doesn’t sit well with them. We should remind them that neither Buddha nor Socrates claimed to be God but Jesus did! The Pevensie children soon learned the truth of Lucy’s claim and, hopefully, others will see the logic and truth of Jesus, as well!
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 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]
Many years ago, my two boys were playing at their grandparents’ house. While Grandpa worked in the garden, the brothers climbed up into the apple tree and started to throw apples at him. A patient man, their grandfather told them to stop and, when more apples came whizzing at him, he offered a sterner warning. After briefly stopping their barrage, the rascals were unable to resist the temptation and chucked more apples at Grandpa. To their surprise, this gentle and loving man turned around, picked up some apples, and returned fire. Having played ball as a boy, Gramps had a strong throwing arm and excellent aim. He didn’t pull any punches as he pitched those apples back at his grandsons. The boys, unable to maneuver easily in the tree, quickly learned the meaning of “as easy as shooting fish in a rain barrel.” When they called, “Stop, Grandpa, it hurts!” he replied, “Yes, I know it does, but you needed to learn that!” It wasn’t until those hard apples hit their bodies that the youngsters understood how much their disobedience hurt their grandfather (both physically and emotionally).
In Letters to Malcom, C. S. Lewis wrote, “We, or at least I, shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. … Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”
Although he was a man of faith, my father was not a man of laughter, tenderness, affection, or patience. When I was a child, my understanding of fear of the Lord was much like the fear I had of my father—fear that I never could be pretty, smart, talented, or good enough to earn either his or God’s love. Try as I might, I always seemed to fall short.
Years ago, I often cared for my granddaughter while also watching my son’s dog. The grand in her highchair would push her food around the tray while trying to feed herself. Since fine motor skills are lacking in toddlers, a fair amount of whatever she was eating ended up on the floor. Whatever my grand didn’t get in her mouth became a feast for the dog waiting patiently beneath her for the bits and pieces that fell. When she was a bit older, I think she deliberately dropped a few tidbits for her canine friend.
The Israelites had been away from Israel for less than two months when they arrived at Rephidim. With no water to drink, the people complained, questioned whether the Lord was with them, criticized Moses, and then threatened him. Fearing for his life, Moses asked God what to do. Instructing him to strike a rock with his staff, God promised that water would come gushing out and, as promised, it did. The miracle was memorialized by the name given to this location, Massah (meaning testing) and Meribah (meaning quarreling.) Unfortunately, that was not the last time the Israelites tested the Lord and quarreled with Moses.
