No Other Sensical Explanation

“either Jesus is actually the Son of God as he claimed, or he was a madman. There is really no other sensical explanation.”

Wow. I didn’t know CS wrote that. When I read the Gospels all together for the first time as an adult, I came away utterly convinced of Jesus’ historicity — nobody could have made him up, he was just too far beyond anybody of the time, including the folks who wrote about him. And I was utterly convinced that he said and believed what he said about his pre- and post-human life, “before Abraham was, I AM,” and coming from and returning to the Father. That was just too integral a part of the whole story, said too frequently, and, especially, the real basis of his trial before the Sanhedrin, to think he never said it. So, he meant it, not metaphorically or mystically, but literally.

That kind of puts the challenge to my practical, skeptical sensibilities. Either he was the wisest guy in history, with a certain mad streak that you have to ignore, or he was consistently sane… and the Son of God, incarnate.

I had no real choice but to go with consistently sane.

As I digested that truth, I never really expected to find out more about exactly what being the “Son of God” meant, but I have never since questioned that he was.