Time for me to take a bite out of the abysmally flawed and
presumptuous argument titled “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord” that has been popularized
by the Christian authors C.S. Lewis (originator) and Josh McDowell. These are
authors I used to read consistently, and I bought everything they said, hook,
line, and stinker. Lewis is amazing, and I will never be finished with him. I
love his imagination, honesty, introspection, intellect, and bravery. McDowell
I am finished with, but that’s not to say he doesn’t do a great job at what he
does. Apologetics is nice as a comforting reinforcement of peace, which I am
not keen on attacking in itself; but when one’s peace becomes another’s danger,
it’s time to interrupt the siege-against-self that Christians are in the habit
of erecting. If you build your faith’s walls too high, you risk starving people
inside your walls. What was meant to protect, now suffocates. I write for the
spiritually emaciated who can no longer subsist on shadows, and for the sake of
a widening of spiritual communities to include others just outside the walls
who are lonely and ready to share insight and resources.
There is no need for me to go all heady and uber-academic on
you. Others have done it that way (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_perry/trilemma.html),
but I’m going to break it down very simply so a fourth grader could understand.
Well, sort of.
The first thing I want you to know is that the “lunatic,
liar, Lord” argument is entirely specious (only sounds good on the surface).
The ‘trilemma’ as McDowell calls it (not sure he’s using that word right), is
from beginning to end a coercion of terms and options. Lewis was certainly
creative when he named and limited these alternatives, but they were concocted specifically
for the Christ-question, specifically by a Christian. Many apologists I’ve
witnessed who use this so-called ‘test of divinity’ are muscling the debate and
rushing the listener into accepting that this is a valid experiment. It’s like
saying, “For an apple to be real it must be red, juicy, and tasty. Now, quick,
look at the apple in my hand. Is it red, juicy, and tasty? Yes. Then it’s a
real apple! Now, quick, look at the apple in your hand. Is it red, juicy, and
tasty? No? Then it isn’t a real apple!” Genius. Except, it’s not.
We need to slow down, and think about it without feeling
pressure to allow a mysterious third party to dictate and rush the terms. When
someone speaks, and we are trying to ascertain the reliability of their words, what
are the possible outcomes of our test? Lunatic, Liar, or Lord? Or, in other
words, do we have only the three simple and discrete categories of 1)
completely and intentionally false in all ways at all times, 2) eratic and
completely inconsistent at all times and in all ways, or 3) the infinite God
himself as revealed in Jesus Christ the son of God as revealed by evangelical,
fundamentalist Christianity? I don’t think so. I have never yet used any
categories of the sort, irrespective of whether or not I’m speaking about the
claims of Jesus, Napoleon, Napoleon Dynamite, or Muhammad Ali, to name a
bizarrely randomized few. Please don’t psychoanalyze me based on that list. ;)
Now then, what categories might actually come to mind when I
am trying to determine accuracy of a statement or reliability of a speaker? Consider
these 20 suggestions which may emerge as possibilities; 1) mostly right, 2)
mostly wrong, 3) in denial, 4) confused, 5) incorrect in premise, 6) correct in
premise, 7) misled, 8) mistaken, 9) forgetful, 10) accidentally correct, 11) biased,
12) provincial, 13) illiterate, 14) uneducated, 15) malicious, 16)
overcommitted, 17)misinformed, 18) misunderstood, 19) overstated, or 20)
exaggerated; all of which are results with spectrums, ambiguities, overlap, and
cultural/personal connotations with nuances that may change in meaning and
boundaries from person to person and time to time.
As most human beings experience and observe, truth and
falsehood come mostly in mixed bags. Who would deny that? But when it comes to
Jesus and his claims, it’s apparent that the ‘tests’ of his divinity are
absurdly specialized. But why would we do that? If he’s divine, he needs no
help from us to prove it. Or maybe he does? Maybe apologists are just looking
for a fast win against the argumentative onslaught of unbelievers? Or maybe, as
I believe is often the case, many are simply trying to stabilize their ideas
and emotions by rushing to easy answers that don’t require a constant
questioning of the truth of everything they’ve been taught. Perhaps people
don’t like to be shaken to their very foundation by every doubt that surfaces
internally or externally. Can you blame them? “A double-minded man is unstable
in all his ways.” But then again, as one smart man said before, we need to be
careful not to build our lives on a foundation of sand. Make sure you’re ladder
is against the right wall when you’re climbing. We can’t be questioning
ourselves all the time, but we have to question ourselves sometimes, or we risk
putting a lot of work into something that won’t ultimately satisfy.
So, abbreviated soul-searching is developed to give
ourselves the impression that we’ve done our homework and we’re on the right
path. Apologists come up with only three alternatives for the veracity of
Christ’s teaching, and since it appears clear to most people that Jesus doesn’t
neatly fit into “liar” or “lunatic” category, then they are left with only one
option: “Lord.” But are there other options here?
As stated above, there are always thousands of other
possible NORMAL alternatives left. For those who still can’t see, let me apply
a few possible alternatives to the case of Jesus in particular.
1.
First and foremost, the carriers of the Jesus traditions
would have to be sent through a barrage of tests. If the apologists are right
about their test for reliability, then the story-tellers, transcribers,
translators, and paraphrasers of the Jesus traditions would have to be
submitted to the “lunatic”, “liar”or “Lord [inerrant demi-gods]” evaluation. For
some reason, many apologists simply assume their test is being applied directly
to the words of Jesus without thousands of years intervening.
Assuming the carriers of the
Jesus-traditions didn’t have to be tested because their veracity has been
established by some method for determining the inerrancy of errant beings
(huh?), then we start with the possibility of results concerning the ‘direct’ words
of Jesus as we have them in most Bibles.
2.
Jesus may have been partly misled. It is no
secret that Jesus was born into a culture of traditions and prophesies about the
coming Messiah and the Messianic Kingdom. Jesus may have assumed, like many
others, that the Messiah was indeed coming, and he may have been convinced that
he fulfilled, at least in part, the prophesies. Maybe he began to buy his own
hype, and allowed himself to have a title foisted on him. We all have doting
family, friends, co-workers or acquaintances who at times think that we’re
going to revolutionize the world (or is that just me?). Would a precocious
12-year-old Jesus, wow-ing the Temple leaders, have been able to be mature and
level-headed enough to separate fact from fiction and reject an archetype that
others said he was evidently fitting? Maybe, as he grew older, he didn’t necessarily
believe he fulfilled ALL of the prophesies, and only partly viewed himself as the Messiah. He did make clear many times
that he wasn’t the kind of Messiah that everyone was expecting, and there’s reason
to believe that Jesus was not convinced all the prophesies would be fulfilled by him in his lifetime. Why would he have
started to talk about a Second Coming if he fully accomplished everything the
Messiah was supposed to?
3.
Jesus may have been simply mistaken about being
the Messiah. He could very well have been sincere and sane, and tried, as many
others did, to don a mantle, or borrowed a title, to substantiate his internal conviction
and support his claim as a leader. Does that make him a liar if he honestly
believed that he fit the Messiah role? The Messiah title was more descriptive
of a responsibility than an ontology, and only later in New Testament times,
and possibly after, was the idea of the God-man really developed apart from a
few nebulous passages in the Torah. If ‘Messiah’ was more of a label for “the
Jewish hero”, then many people could have attempted to assume this role, and
they did, with good intentions. Whether or not they succeeded as hero would be
beside the point.
Or, Jesus may have sincerely believed he
was a unique kind of being sharing God’s own spirit and power. That doesn’t
make him necessarily a liar or a lunatic, especially in a culture where God’s
manifestations in and through people were common expectations if not realities.
Even if Jesus view of himself as one-with-God was a contradiction to his
ordinary human experience, many people learn to live with contradictions in
practice and thought that don’t necessarily sabotage a life of good works. Believing
in some nonsense is the order of the day for all people. If all he was doing
was running around screaming that he was God (which he didn’t), then we might
say he suffering from a delusion; but if he was still competent in most other
areas and capable as a revolutionary and civil rights activist, then he was
very functional in his delusion. Not exactly lunatic material in my mind.
4.
Jesus may have been confused about his own
identity. He may have been back-and-forth regarding his spiritual participation
in divinity and his mortal physicality. Aren’t we all? And that would explain
many of the discrepancies and obscurities in his teaching, especially in
anything regarding the nature of the soul, the afterlife of the soul, or
metaphysics in general. Biblical theology, much less the metaphysics of Jesus,
is anything but systematic. If apologists try too hard to constitute a
systematized theology, they risk denying the supra-rationale basis the Bible
they are working so hard to protect.
5.
Jesus may have purposely adumbrated, or obscured
the truth in such a way that allowed people who needed him to be the Messiah to think he was the Messiah. People
very often need an authority figure to give them an excuse to do what they know
they should be doing. Every pastor knows this truth intimately. We know Jesus
spoke in parables to the crowds, but often revealed hidden meanings to his
disciples in private. He mentioned in the book of St. John that he spoke in
earthly terms so that people could understand the other-worldly meanings they
weren’t ready for. He told his own disciples that there were things he wanted
to tell them but they weren’t ready to hear. What if he allowed people to
believe some false things about him, and even perpetuated some of those beliefs
by ambiguous statements, so that they would have ‘permission’ to throw off the
religious oppression of their leaders? For severely manipulated and brainwashed
people, there may often be a ‘reverse brainwashing’ in order. One author said, “If one does not know how to
lie, one does not know what the truth is…’not lying’ and ‘telling the truth’
are not the same thing.” How many people in the Holocaust were rescued because
someone lied to save a life? On some level, we all ‘lie’ everyday when we
change our language and behavior around different people who speak in different
ways. We tell our children that the sun rises, love is in the heart, and that
grandpa is up in heaven looking down. Are we lying, or borrowing their
conceptual framework and elementary linguistic tools to communicate ideas that
are beyond their experience and powers of cognition?
6.
Could Jesus have overcommitted to his ideology
and felt compelled to start contributed more into a sociopolitical myth than he
originally had planned? Could he have found himself amid exaggeration, sensationalism
and eventually deception that he felt was for a good cause, but which he deeply
regretted and planned to modify? If he was a liar, and conscious of it, was it
something he felt was for the common good? Was he now committed to doing
whatever was necessary to break the yoke of religious/political oppression,
even to the point of regularly deceiving ‘the sheep’, and encouraging a
revolution that was powered by a beneficent deception? If it helped more people
eat, feel peace, think more kindly on others, and develop a better sense of
well-being and love, was it so bad? Maybe he took it ‘too far’ by some people’s
standards. Was he a liar, or a secret agent of light cloaked in shadows and
deep deceptions to invade the nightmarish darkness and free its prisoners?
This is just the beginning. As I said before, the test of reliability
and intention for any person despite their claims could yield results with
spectrums, ambiguities, overlap, and cultural/personal connotations with
nuances that may change in meaning and boundaries from person to person and
time to time. The idea that the results of reliability/intention analysis could
produce results that are as simplistic and distinct as “lunatic, liar, or lord”
is tremendously oversimplified and over-zealous to achieve an easy confirmation
of one’s beliefs.
There’s no easy magic in this life; no waving a magic wand,
declaring something ‘safe’, and proceeding without caution because now our way
is infallible. There is no sphere of human existence, no experiential scenario,
in which this has ever played out as beneficial in the long run, and it has
been running long enough. Inerrancy is a metaphysical dream quite unlikely,
ipso facto, to be realized in an imperfect world.
So, try it for yourself. Try applying the touchstone of
“Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” to any person you know. See if it is helpful as a tool
for anything but a specialized case in which all factors are controlled to
bring a very specific and consistently irresistible result: Jesus is God. The
results probably won’t surprise you.
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