What Kind of God is Worth It? (part 2)

Recently an Episcopal priest was asked by her bishop to take a year's time out from ministry because she recently went public with her claim to be "100% Christian, 100% Muslim." The crux of the dilemma is the antithetical ways the two religions regard Jesus. Is Jesus merely a human prophet, or the Divine Son of Go--fully God and fully human? It's not like chocolate and vanilla, folks; it's more like night and day.

This has critical ramifications about the kind of God who is worthy of our worship. In fact, it could even be argued that Muslims (or any other monotheist for that matter) do not worship the same God at all! Here's why? If Jesus is indeed God in the flesh, then everyone else has a depreciated view of God and is a de facto idolater. If Jesus as the Son of God is merely some guy who claims to be God (or someone whose followers mistakenly believe claims to be God), then the Christians are the most obvious idolaters, even if they claim to be monotheists. The key is to prove or disprove the Divinity of Jesus.

To prove Jesus' Divinity, we need to answer two questions: 1) Did Jesus claim to be God? and 2) What did Jesus do to demonstrate his Divinity?

First, there is substantial enough biblical evidence to indicate Jesus did claim to be God. He did this through implications in his discourses with others, his personal description of himself, and the mission with which he identified himself. You may click here to consider this evidence.

Second, Jesus did various miracles that point to his Divinity. The key one is his resurrection from the grave. Various people have tried to deny the resurrection of Jesus, or in the case of Islam, deny Jesus ever died on the cross. Here is a site that handles most of the possibilities quite well. Here is a site that fairly comprehensively addresses Islam's objections to Jesus' actual death.

In the end, all monotheists must come to grips with the identity of Jesus because the very nature of the God we say we worship is at stake. As you ponder Jesus' own question to the Apostle Peter--"Who do you say that I am?"--I encourage you to take the words of the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis into account:

You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and call Him a demon; or you can fall at
His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense
about Him being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend
to.