“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.” ~C.S. Lewis
Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? Goodness and understanding of reality seem to be orthogonal (or even opposed as many people who are, or at least think they are, realists, are quite cynical).
For statements like, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," sure. Lewis' point is that he made all kinds of other claims that are either true or false. And if they are false, they are false in a way that led to lots of people dying for no reason. So Jesus was either saying those things that led to all his followers being killed either because he was crazy and believed what he said, because he was a liar and evil, or because he was telling the truth and good.
By what would the lunatic ground their thinking? From one angle, I can respect your argument as in a case where someone opines "Wow, look at Crazy Pete. He sure is crazy but he's nice to animals. Maybe I should be nice to animals too, like he is!"
In the case of Jesus, he told his followers to eat him (John 6). Potentially normal lunatic stuff...when they were like "whoa wtf bro" he doubled down and kept using a word which describes teeth tearing and chewing. I don't find cannibalism to be highly moral (since it usually involves murder) so shouldn't that disqualify Jesus from being a lunatic but also a good moral teacher?
You seem to assuming that all of ones teachings must be moral in order for one to be able to be a good moral teacher. But if people are able to pick and choose teachings then this may not be required. As an example, many people would consider the bible to be a good source of moral teaching, but most would admit that it contains some teachings which are outright reprehensible.
If someone needed to be entirely good to be a good moral teacher then almost nobody (if anybody) would qualify.
In Matthew 5:48, Jesus tells us to "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect". I'm just holding him to his own moral standard :)
Moral authority is only as powerful as the believers not finding out you don't ACTUALLY believe what you are telling them to. People easily write off the Catholic Church because of the disgusting abuses Catholic authority figures have perpetrated throughout the ages. Pick and choose works with bare philosophies but Jesus isn't asking us to believe right, he's asking us to live right. You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right.
To follow this lunatic you have to eat his flesh. From John 6:
> 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
> 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
> 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Similarly at the Last Supper, where he also instructs his followers to drink his blood:
> 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the[b] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Some folks (even Christians, like some Protestant denominations) believe it is meant to be symbolic, but the earliest Christians did not take it symbolically:
So what is Jesus teaching when he says that you must love [Hh]im above all, and that [Hh]e is the truth itself?
> 37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
> 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
If only this quote also convinced the Church to never do the opposite - accepting Jesus as God but ignoring his moral teachings in favor of more vindictive, spiteful ones from the OT or Paul or whoever else.
One of the things I find strangest about religion is the acceptance of God not only as the creator of the world, but as a moral authority. I can somewhat understand people wanting to reach for a supernatural explanation for the creation of the world: I don't personally find "God" a satisfactory explanation, but I also don't really have a better one. But I really struggle to understand why they would then defer to that creator's (supposed) moral teachings. It's really a completely separate belief to the belief of god as a creator, but the two are often combined into one question of whether one "believes in god".
> One of the things I find strangest about religion is the acceptance of God not only as the creator of the world, but as a moral authority.
Aquinas gave a summary in the 1200s: Article 1. Whether God is good?; Article 2. Whether God is the supreme good?; Article 3. Whether to be essentially good belongs to God alone?
The late Michael F. Flynn wrote a decent summary of the argument in his five-part series laying out Aristotle's first way argument about the Unmoved Mover:
In Christianity, this is theologically explained as "God is good and the source of all good, his will is good and to go against his will is therefore bad". Catholics throughout history have written about it in depth (sometimes like REALLY in depth).
It also follows that if God made the universe, and the universe has goodness in it, then God either created goodness too or he IS goodness. Darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God. Therefore, God is good.
Too bad we believers have done such a terrible and easy to criticize job of being Christlike. I can't blame anyone for saying Christianity has too much baggage for them to even want to believe.
> It also follows that if God made the universe, and the universe has goodness in it, then God either created goodness too or he IS goodness
Doesn't that argument apply equally to "badness" (I guess "evil" might be the more idiomatic term): if God made the universe, and the universe has badness in it, then God either created badness too or he IS badness. Therefore, God is bad.
> In Christianity, this is theologically explained as "God is good and the source of all good, his will is good and to go against his will is therefore bad"
Of course the question is why we ought to believe this as opposed to following our own moral convictions. And from my perhaps cynical perspective, this seems to be what Christians do anyway (moral views vary dramatically within Christianity): they just ascribe their own moral views to God.
> Doesn't that argument apply equally to "badness" (I guess "evil" might be the more idiomatic term): if God made the universe, and the universe has badness in it, then God either created badness too or he IS badness.
Aquinas covered this in the 1200s, "Whether the supreme good, God, is the cause of evil?":
> Of course the question is why we ought to believe this as opposed to following our own moral convictions.
You say slavery is bad. I say slavery is fine. You can follow your mortal convictions (and not have slaves), and I'll follow mine (and run a cotton plantation). But the two statements are contradictory, so which of us is following the "correct" one?
Of course this assumes that there is an objective moral code—which begs the question on where it would come from.
Consider a light source in front of a shutter. The light is the positive, additive energy that flows through the shutter when it is open. If you close the shutter, are you creating darkness? Or is the light just no longer illuminating anything past the shutter? Is a heart which won't let God in dark because it is emanating something, or because it lacks something?
Regarding moral convictions, that one's obviously true. Everyone from Luther to Wesley were interpreting the Bible in new ways after the reformation, so it's no surprise "interpret it yourself" became people's primary strategy.
That said, for a baptized Christian, we receive the Holy Spirit (aka the Paraclete, or counselor). Christians are encouraged to read the Bible so the Holy Spirit can call those verses to mind when they are relevant to something, such as seeing a hungry person and hearing "Feed my lambs" in your heart.
So while having an authority structure is good for some, others don't need it. I described the Bible to my father in law as "the rules of the beach - follow them or you'll get kicked out of the beach. That's enough for some people to never commit grave sin, just knowing the rules. Sometimes it's more complicated than that." The Holy Spirit fills in that gap and helps guide us even when the Bible didn't explicitly say something it couldn't have known like "don't cyberbully people because it's a sin."
Of course from the outside looking in, that just sounds like "your conscience" in some respects, but your conscience affects you after an act, not before it. The Holy Spirit is our guide in this world and is the one who speaks what needs to be said as Jesus told his disciples not to worry about what they are to say to authorities when brought to court, as the Holy Spirit will give them what they should say when they get there.
Obviously people can and do ignore the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't mean he isn't still helping them.
I've long had a notion that Christianity should be refactored to be spiritual rather than authoritarian.
It's clear that people are wired for worship (for those of no faith, we have celebrities). I liken it to atomic power, potentially beneficial when properly harnessed, or horribly destructive when weaponized.
No, we don't. I know this is commonly bandied about as a truism but no one actually worships celebrities in the same way, or for the same purpose, as the religious worshiping deity, except maybe serial killers.
The main concern there would be vital information being watered down or skipped over, but that bird flew the coop 500 years ago during the Protestant Reformation when people developed their own theologies and decided what was important for themselves, and then taught others.
Plus, it's not like the Reformation happened out of nowhere. The Catholic Church made lots of mistakes and awful decisions for a long time before people had enough.
I'm Catholic, and my favorite devotion is Divine Mercy. One of the teachings of the devotion (direct from Jesus, according to Sister Faustina) is that what hurts him the most is when people can't accept his mercy after death. They believe their sins are greater than his mercy (which is infinite) and they send themselves to hell as a result.
Jesus wants to be merciful to all, but he also said (Matthew 5:6, Matthew 18:21-35) that those who are merciful are the ones who receive mercy.
So if everyone walked around being merciful and forgiving one another, we'd certainly be a lot better off!
Perhaps the reason the two things are conflated is because there is an assumption that if you knew God exists, your choice wouldn't be to choose to reject doing what he commands. But as you point out that, that is an assumption that isn't necessarily true.
Especially once you throw the Problem of Evil in there ("Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?")
But monotheistic religion is so bothered with God being an ultimate moral authority (beyond just being omnipotent) that it must perform some scary mental gymnastics to reconcile this, which usually goes thusly: evil and suffering are part of God's Plan. Evil serves some purpose that will be revealed in heaven or whatever, so its existence can be tolerated (when it would be inconvenient not to).
That's a dangerous place to be. Children slowly dying of cancer, or being murdered in war, for example, can't matter on some ultimate moral level because God allowed it to happen, and anyways they're all happy in heaven now. Any horrifying thing can be handwaved away by religion as not mattering, because otherwise that would mean God messed up.
Religion doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of thinking, either. Political ideology or secular morality can also condone unspeakable things "for the greater good" or because "that's just the way it is". I really think it shouldn't be some bizarre stance that all uncommon suffering is unequivocally bad, but here we are.
Lewis also believed that people were inherently immoral, to the point of deserving eternal punishment without the intercession of a savior. So his concept of a "moral teacher" might have been a bit suspect.
That’s a general tenet of all religions rooted in Judaism. OT—-“No one is righteous, no, not one.”—and later in NT Romans—-“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
The inadequacy and even brokenness of man is what necessitates a Messiah in the first place.