Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP29: Jesus Lied
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With my title — “Jesus Lied” — many Christians will probably presume this is yet another attack on their religious beliefs, while non-Christians will think this affirms what they already believe — that Jesus, if there was such a person, was merely a man and not God.
Both of these perspectives, however, miss the point I’m trying to make, that people don’t think, they think they think.
For starters, it is really quite simple to prove that Jesus did indeed lie. How do we know this? Because he taught by using parables. And parables are stories, fiction; and all fiction is, by definition, lies. Even children know this. Instead of saying that someone has lied to them, they will say, “He told me a story.”
That doesn’t mean non-Christians can run with this tidbit of information and shout from their rooftops, “Jesus lied! Jesus lied!” To do that would simply illustrate the problem with public discourse today. People are shouting factoids at each other that say nothing more than, “I was right! I told you so!”
If you are pre-disposed to believe that Jesus was merely a man and that, like the rest of us, it was in his nature to lie — you are still in shallow water, for intellectual honesty compels us to examine a proposition not only from our own perspective but also from the opposing point of view.
In the case of our lying Jesus, for instance, we have to ask ourselves a follow-up question: If, as Christians claim, Jesus is God and if he did, in fact, lie — was there a reason he chose to lie?
Was it simply because of his human nature? Or is there something deeper here that we’re not seeing?
Again, intellectual honesty requires we wade into these deeper waters.
Now, according to the Judeo-Christian concept, man, having fallen from grace in the garden of Eden, lives in a corrupted state.
And, yes, I know you (and I) suspect that story about Adam and Eve is just a story, a myth, a fable — a lie.
But what about the underlying point of the Judeo-Christian story, that man lives in a corrupted state? Would that provide us with a reason Jesus might have lied?
I think it does.
If man possesses a corrupted soul, if his mind is predisposed to believing lies — then it follows that the best (and, in many cases, only) way to insinuate a truth, any truth, into that corrupted mind is to clothe it in a lie.
In that way, Truth will be able to worm its way through the convolutions of the corrupted mind.
Actually, this is how we learn most of the things we believe. We do not appreciate or accept something when someone preaches it to us. It’s boring. But, as all good teachers know, if you use stories or parables, you will achieve a far greater success.
In fact, listen to the words coming out of your own mouth when you discuss things with others.
Almost invariably, we will make a reference to a scene in a movie or a TV show or a story we heard to illustrate or make our point. Oftentimes, it’s almost impossible to debate or speak our truth without, first, wrapping it up in a lie so the other person will understand.
This, of course, still does not resolve the question of whether Jesus was just a man or if he was God. But our exercise should demonstrate how we can move out of shallow water and think more deeply about a subject.
And it’s an exciting exercise, isn’t it? I find it thrilling when I can see things from more than just my own narrow point of view.
And there’s one more step, a caveat, before we end:
Some Christian theologians wonder if their all-knowing God fully understood all the diabolic twists and turns in man’s corrupted mind before Jesus was incarnated.
In other words, did Jesus, as God, become man so he could fully understand how the corrupted mind of man worked?
That adds a whole new dimension to why God may have wanted His son to become man, doesn’t it?
And it might also explain why Jesus, once he became man, realized he would have to lie to tell the truth.
