Mere Christianity, Chapter 8 - Part C

Lewis explains that one cannot reasonably see Jesus as a great moral teacher if they have a significant understanding of what Jesus said. Jesus claimed to be god himself, from outside the world, and claimed the ability to forgive all grievances despite who was injured. As a result, Lewis says, we must either decide he is a madman for claiming to literally be god, or open ourselves to the possibility that he may actually be god.

I cannot but flatly reject this dichotomy. There are other ways of explaining or understanding Jesus that can be considered which are equally valid or invalid, depending on your assumptions. Rather than only being a madman or god, he may have also have been an artist, a mortal prophet, a demigod, or even a rival god -it all depends on your frame of reference, your paradigm. If you are a pure athiest with no sense of artistry, then you may not be able to see him as anything but madman. If you fully believe in an active, powerful, loving god, then it seems obvious that it was god on earth. If you're interested in inspiring people, then maybe you would see him as a similar kind of person, like a gandhi with an ego. Finally, if you fell elsewhere on the religious map, you might be inclined to call him a prophet, buddha, demigod, or even a rival of God's.

Probably the best example that would resonate with people today would be if we described Jesus as a talented artist. Just as actors play the parts of powerful symbols in our own time to spread messages or alter people's behavior, so perhaps Jesus took the same approach. He seems to have had one key difference, however. For added impact, rather than confining his message to the stage, where it could be dismissed as merely entertainment, he put it in the middle of the society - blurring the lines between method acting and performance art. If he was for social commentary what Borat is for comedy, then naturally people would get polarized views of him: some would see his performances for what they were but would not understand his artistic intent and call him a blasphemer, while others might genuinely believe that his skilled performances and curious-but-coherent logic were real and him a miracle worker.

But he wouldn't die for that art, would he? If he didn't wink and give away the game, we today could almost see it playing out as it did in the bible. And why should he wink, if he's suddenly being treated with a tremendous amount of respect, with people following him about from place to place? Why would he blink when dragged before a bunch of stuffy politicians who 'didn't get him' and weren't going to do anything to him anyway? Why would he blink in front of the Romans who seemed to be impressed with him, and not particularly happy with the angry politicians? Maybe Jesus-the-artist took his act as far as he thought he could, only to discover that the politicians had more power than he'd thought. By then it was too late, though - the crowd had turned on him, and his 'coming out' would only further anger them. So, given the choice between death-by-crowd and death-by-roman, he stuck with his act, and made such an impression on his fellow actors that they continued the game after he died, and thus made a talented artist the Jesus of the Gospels.