[Writing from my breakfast bar, listening to the newest Fray album, sipping on coffee, and occasionally glancing out the window at the birds hopping in the snow.]

I finished up our brief 4 week look at spirituality last night focusing in on culture and religion. It’s been one of my favorite teaching series in the last year and we saw some very cool things happen in the lives of our students. There’s been some momentum building in these last weeks as students have been inviting friends and we’ve been filling our meeting space. Next week we’re anticipating around 80-100 students for a special Fuel gathering.

Last night we briefly hit on atheism and spent a bit of time on the popular thought that ‘all roads lead to God’. The interesting thing is how many people in our culture have issue with Christianity but no problem with Jesus. They see him as a good person, teacher, leader, etc. But because of his imperfect followers, (like me) many people get turned off to Christianity and don’t go much further. I should restate something. Most people have no issue with Jesus, they just have issue to his claim that he is the only way (road) to God. This is the tipping point in the ‘all roads lead to God’ thought which Jesus himself addresses - see Matt 7:3-14

The allegory that God is a destination to be reached is the wrong one to have. God desires relationship and relationship is never gained in a linear way. This is the fundamental difference between most religions (even some forms of Christianity) and what Jesus taught. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to God unless they know me.

Former Atheist turned Christian Author, C.S. Lewis says, “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 a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool 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.”

Either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord.