I think we should start more conversations about Jesus.
The question, "Tell me what you think about Jesus" can be amazingly interesting and productive. Even people who are somewhat antagonistic to Christianity tend to be keenly interested in this subject once it is engaged. And with this question we can normally begin to challenge long held assumptions about the nature of Christ. Jesus was not just a "good man" or a "good religious leader" or a "good teacher". Jesus claimed to be God and challenged His disciples to spread the word and make disicples of all nations based on His redemptive work on the cross. Good men or good teachers don't make these kinds of claims if they are not true.
No one said it better than C.S. Lewis:
"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 a 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."
Engaging people with the gospel begins with simple questions that challenge conventional belief. Let's find ways to help people answer these important questions and do it in a way that projects gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). After all, the most powerful aspect of the message of the gospel is the life of Jesus Himself. I love this statement by Dr. James Allen Francis written in 1926:
Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.
He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...
While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.
I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.
