I like to listen to Brant Hansen. He’s a radio personality who does a podcast with his producer, Sherri. This morning as I was going to work, I heard him say something that made me think (one of my favorite things).
“Who else?”
The question was about following Jesus, and it was what he’d like to ask those who say “no thanks” when confronted by the gospel. The thing is, I’m sure there are plenty of things people could say to the gospel. Like everything of this importance, it’s nuanced.
So, it’s important to consider the perspective of the gospel’s deniers. “Just because I don’t follow some kind of fairy tale doesn’t mean I’m a bad person.” And it’s easy to go there. We all have a sense of our moral rightness, even if we have to rely on some kind of moral standard to make that trip.
Yet that moral standard – our innate sense of right and wrong – has to come from somewhere. The denier should at least admit this much. There’s something there.
And still, the point behind the question goes to something more. It goes to two things – a person and a choice. The person is the “who,” but the choice is that it’s either him or something…someone else. That we are a spiritual people is undeniable, even if we don’t want to admit it – most of the world’s population believes in a higher being or calling of some type, and the ones who don’t act like they do (if at least by appealing to that moral standard).
But what I find more compelling is that one of the primary features of the gospel is its basis in historical events. What happened either happened or it didn’t. If it did, then he is who he is. And so, as C.S. Lewis so famously said, “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 patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Who else?
I wrote about Beautiful Eulogy’s song “Surrender” just a few days ago with a quote similar to this one: “Bound to sin or bound to obey, either way we’re both slaves, one kills one saves.”
But I’ll let another, more famous musician get to the point here. Who’s it going to be? Who else is there? I hope you figure it out. I hope you take it seriously enough to try…