nice guy jesus

was with a friend trying to find some to talk to about jesus at sydney uni, and ended up chatting to this girl who had founded her own religion (membership = 1). what frustrated me most in the conversation was her inability to see the complete arbitrariness of a system that takes a foundation of pop-buddhism, part new-age-spirituality, and the nice-guy jesus who said some things that the gospels are just trying to distort.

it's not at all an uncommon thing, but i really don't know how to get through to this kind of person. C.S. Lewis' famous quote came back into my head as i've been reflecting on the conversation:

... 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.

quote originally from Mere Christianity, this one in From Narnia to a Space Odyssey, a conversation between Arthur C. Clarke (who could be classed as believing in 'scientism') and C.S. Lewis (who rejected the claim that science answered all of life's problems). book edited by Ryder W. Miller, iBooks, N.Y., 2004.

Alone

as mentioned, i'm reading Tim Keller's the reason for God for a book review. and just made it to the half-way point this afternoon (before succumbing to swine flu for an afternoon nap).

in it, this masterful quote from C.S. Lewis (who i think Keller really likes for his apologetics):

If what you want is an argument against Christianity... you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say ... "So there's your boasted new man! Give me the old kind." But if once you have begun to see that Christianity is on other grounds probable, you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands.

If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.

You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next-door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count when the anaesthetic fog we call "nature" or "the real world" fades away and the Divine Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?

this is from Lewis' Mere Christianity (Macmillan: 1965 p168), which (so it was sold to me) is what Tim Keller is trying to perhaps not emulate in the Reason for God, but retell, from his own perspective; to set out clearly, and carefully, just what it is that makes Christianity not stupid, but reasonable, and sensible.

i think Keller wants the non-Christian to pick up this book and say firstly, 'that's a stupid title - as if there's a reason for God'. then he wants their Christian friend to say, 'why's it stupid?' and then whatever their answer, be able to say, 'no, he talks about that too - he's thought about that, we - Christians - HAVE thought about that. you're not the first or the only one to ask that. read his answer. than come back to me'. or something like that.

if you're reading, Mick, i'll have that review out for you soon!

today tonight is not on this weekend

probably just for programming reasons, but still - convinced that Jesus was a crazy, or if not, then a con, what do you do with the resurrection?

what do you do with THAT, Anna Coren?
my guess, going off "current affairs'" form, is to just ignore the past, and turn it into a puff piece, a nice break from the harsh exposés of the last couple of days. I could imagine it going a little something like this:

little palestinian battler, the boy from the bush made good, the unassuming chippie from the north-west keeps a promise that was made a long long time ago

all they then need is a few emotional friends and relo's talkin' him up, maybe a party, and a slow-mo with some moving background music, perhaps even Jessie, or something similarly moving; a montage of key events - hanging out in the temple with the grown ups (the little rascal), reading from Isaiah in the synagogue, losing it in the temple, healing blind Bartimaeus, holding the little children in one arm, a lamb in the other (or perhaps even a velociraptor, and of course the plethora of emotions flowing out of his arrest and crucifixion.
of course the climax (of the montage, as well as the song), comes when Jesus is running out of the tomb, magically transported to the beach, running towards Mary and the disciples, who all fall down in slow-motion, giggling and laughing and crying because they're so happy.

can you think of a better reaction? i can't.

this post probably makes a little more sense in the light of Friday's and Saturday's posts. and if you've read C.S. Lewis anywhere on Liar, Lord or Lunatic

Christ is risen;
He is risen indeed!

Jesus the Crackpot

Jesus the confused, Jesus the deluded.
he was just trying to figure out who he was, what his mission on earth was.
it wasn't that he was deliberately trying to mislead people, for he did want to help them, guide them to happiness, to self-empowerment.
as John Carrol's the existential Jesus reveals, all that he tried to do failed. his kingdom failed. his disciples were let down, ashamedly dissociating themselves from him in his last day.

in contrast to today tonight's revelation yesterday that Jesus was a failure, it seems Jesus was perhaps not so much a failure as deluded.
and when you look at it that way, maybe we should give this man a break.
perhaps he too, like Moses, had been on a hallucinogenic road-trip, that ended worse than any teenage road-trip movie could imagine.

who knows? Jesus' embarrassing death shows he was either a crackpot or a con-man.

Today Tonight reveals: Jesus the Fraudster

Jesus the con artist. Jesus the failure.§

the inscription in the photo reads "the King of the Jews", according to John in Aramaic, Greek and Latin (John 19:20)
who he claimed to be, who his disciples were built up to believe he was - he let them all down.
And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!" (Mark 15:29-30)

if A Current Affair, or Today Tonight*, were around in the fourth decade AD, you could picture them standing around the cross, joining in the insults.

Anna Coren, Today Tonight: tell me, Mr Of Nazareth, what do you have to say to your disciples? What do you have to say to the people to whom you promised so much? if you really are who you say you are, why don't you get down off that cross right now and do what you said? you can't, can you. just admit it - you are a con artist. Just say sorry, ok? that's all we want. A simple apology for the way you.....

and the passers by, the chief priests and the scribes, would have been urging her on.
we too, sitting on our couches, eating our T.V. dinners, would have been laughing at those shmucks who were conned by this defrocked fraudster.

§ this post's theme is borrowed from Tony's talk this morning at St Albans, after C.S. Lewis' threefold Liar, Lord or Lunatic distinction.

* A Current Affair, and Today Tonight are two really dodgy shows purporting to investigate the pressing issues affecting Australians today. much credit for this post must go to Anna Coren's interview of Corey Delaney, which is very inspiring indeed. watch her hard-hitting interview here

buffy and friends and friends

i'm supposed to be writing a talk this week on angels and demons.

C.S. Lewis writes in 1941:

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

(C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Barbour and Company, Inc., 1990)

i believe the same can be said regarding angels.

although i did read on a site discussing the theology of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that several people working on the show did become Christians, in no small part due to the constant discussion of heaven and hell, angels and demons.

if only my youth group kids were old enough to have watched the show, i could justify doing a talk all about how dodgy the Buffy theology is!

arguing from aesthetics

some apologists would try and argue the existence of God from aesthetics.
'how can you say there is no God, when you look at this beautiful photo?!'
some more cynical types would say that that is a stupid argument.
'there's a beautiful photo. why bring God into it?'
c.s. lewis is one apologist who argues from the premise of longing: we all long for something more, there must be something more. as the writer of ecclesiastes said: God has put eternity into the hearts of men (or something like that) (Ecclesiastes 3:11 ).

i think, when one surveys the unquestionable beauty on this earth, one has two choices.

1. look beyond. in the same way as a signpost points you beyond that point, to consider the enormity of the universe, the complexity, even the simplicity, and, if appropriate, whatever/whoever created the whole scene.
   
2. look at yourself. the reflection in the water, of so great a mountain, should remind us of our own reflection. who we are, where we fit, the impossibilty, or design, of your playing a role within eternity.

but aesthetics, as an apologetic for theism, on the way to Christianity, can be only a halfway house on the way to a halfway house. without the full host of where creation fits in to God's plan for salvation, this is ahollow argument.

(although i do believe a brief faustian world tour of contrasts - showing both the beauty and the depravity of creation, both the purpose and the corruption, may well be a valid use of aesthetics as an apologetic)